


i promise to eat you softly

by spaceducky



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Hybrids, M/M, Relationship Study, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unreliable Narrator, other characters later, sort of relationship study
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28756305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceducky/pseuds/spaceducky
Summary: Sometimes when Quackity holds his hand, so gently and so lightly, Schlatt thinks it would be so much easier, so much better, if he were to just crush his fingers as he held them.----Alternatively: a study of the constantly depleting nature of Schlatt and Quackity's relationship and the long-term effects of deciding to not get better.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Jschlatt, Alexis | Quackity & Karl Jacobs & Sapnap, Alexis | Quackity & Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Alexis | Quackity/Jschlatt, Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Comments: 75
Kudos: 371





	1. forget, sin, repeat

**Author's Note:**

> TW// depictions of abuse, metions of blood, illusions to sexual content, character death, slight bodily horror
> 
> I can't help myself but compare Schlatt and Quackity to "The Gun Song - No Trigger Version," so here is my rambling slowly develops into Quackity learning how to deal with his new life. This is simply an exploration of their character's canon relationship.

Schlatt sometimes wonders where it went so wrong, where _he_ went so wrong.

Did he mess it up somewhere along the way? When did his steady fingertips become claws and when did his ram horns, the same ones that his lover had run his fingers over, become the horns of the devil?

When did he start to rot? When did the feeling of his flesh sliding off of his bones become so apparent that even a regular passerby would notice? Was he always rotten? Was he always like this, fucked from the very start?

Sometimes when Quackity holds his hand, so gently and so lightly, Schlatt thinks it would be so much easier, so much better, if he were to just crush his fingers as he held them.

But it's so _hard._

It's so hard when Quackity, so bright and so warm, comes close to him because _God_ does Schlatt want to reach out and just bask in the other man’s warm demeanor.

But only the worst kind of sinners could ruin something so pure. So when Quackity’s hand lingers too long on Schlatt’s upper arm, he pushes the boy away with harsh words and even harsher fingers to avoid falling subject to his desire. 

_It's easier like this,_ he reasons, _it's easier if Quackity hates him._

Schlatt has always been good at this, this sort of feigned indifference, the wretched dedication to his own rotten ideals, but never, _never_ in his life has it been so hard to shoot the goddamn puppy.

And like a puppy Quackity is.

He trails after him and when Schlatt runs his hands behind Quackity’s metaphorical puppy dog ears, the man wags his metaphorical puppy dog tail and obeys.

It’s sickening that he likes it, likes Quackity, so instead of indulging in the tender nature of their relationship, he leans over with outstretched hands and _hurts_. It’s mean, he knows it’s mean, but it feels better than the fear that plagues him in wake of Quackity’s presence.

He’s mean when Quackity smiles sweetly and he’s mean when Quackity yells criticism that only partially weaves its way into his alcohol soaked brain.

Despite all of it, the painful turbulence, there's still these crystal clear moments of oversaturated clarity where Schlatt can trick himself into thinking it's okay.

When they are beneath the sheets, folding over and around each other, they are not Schlatt and Quackity. The boy below him is no more Quackity than he is human, and Schlatt revels in the feeling of being nothing but a body against another body. It’s easier when he’s completely detached from the situation, when they've stripped off their skin and kissed each other on the mouth.

Quackity never touches his face on those nights.

Sometimes, when it gets so cold outside their breath is visible even inside the house, Quackity will tremble at Schlatt’s side.

At night Schlatt will pause, his forearms resting beside the other man's face, caging him in, and letting the warm blanket encase them. Quackity will look so small, completely invisible to anyone but Schlatt, with his breath smelling hot and sweet as it blows in his face. If someone were to stand in the doorway and peer in, they wouldn't be able to see anything but the top of Schlatt’s head. 

It’s grossly rewarding when Schlatt hears Quackity crying softly in the bathroom after some of those nights. They wake up unloving and they wake up soulless. They bleed in the night, visceral words cascading over raw bitten lips, only to melt and mold into new shapes, completely solidified in the morning.

_(“Schlatt,” something akin to a cry chokes through Quackity’s teeth, “please.”_

_He’s pleading and it hurts. A sick part of Schlatt wants to watch it continue, wants to watch him fall apart over something he can't have, fueling his need for control. But that would just be bravado, a dance to cover up his own bleeding body that lacks any eloquence._

_Quackity breaks one of their rules and places his palm on Schlatt’s creek._

_“Please, I feel like,” he chokes, “I feel like there's no one there.”)_

In the mornings, the afternoons, into wine soaked evenings, and even into haze filled nightimes, Quackity laughs. His honesty bleeds all over Schlatt’s hands when he stabs him and it basks in the afterglow after he fucks him.

No matter how many times Schlatt crushes Quackity’s fingers or breaks his wings, the man always wraps him in a hug and mumbles into his chest, his hair, or anything he can reach.

He does it as if Schlatt is not the awful rotten one, as if there is something lurking inside of Schlatt, taking over his body. Quackity doesn’t see it, doesn't get it, that Schlatt has been a walking carcass for years.

Something as pure and golden as Quackity could never truly love something as dead and rotten as himself.

So when Quackity opens up his chest and Schlatt catches glimpses of the golden glow stemming from within, he shuts himself down.

He leans forward and with large, shaking fingers, he dismantles the man’s rib cage. He wraps his hands around each and every bone, pulling them off of his sternum until Quackity can no longer be bothered to run his nails down the taller’s arms. 

Somehow, without fail, Quackity, albeit trembling more than before, will tug the bottles out of Schlatt’s hands. He’ll kiss his nose and let Schlatt bleed all over his white dress shirt. When Schlatt is done spilling out his plethora of rotten animals, Quackity will grab his hands and whisper into his cheek that he loves him.

But Schlatt thinks it’s worse. It’s worse like this when Quackity acts like he loves him. It's so much harder for Schlatt to compartmentalize the complex nature of their already cacophonous relationship, but _this_ , but _Quackity,_ his gentle puppy, so loving so sweet, looks at him like he still believes there's something good inside of Schlatt. 

Schlatt wonders when Quackity will figure out he’s been a corpse this whole time.

It makes telling Quackity to leave so much harder. Schlatt has never been a beggar but _God fucking dammit_ if he wouldn’t get down on his knees and pray for Quackity to leave. He takes Quackity’s rosary, pries it out of his hands, and prays. He mutters words of desperation into the smooth, rounded beads, until he makes himself want to throw up, until he can trick himself into thinking there's something there.

_(“Do you believe in God, Schlatt?”_

_Quackity is leaning over his desk, elbows bent out to the sides, creating a perfect image of attraction in Schlatt’s mind._

_The question stumps him. He thinks about Quackity, with his ethereal glow and brutally righteous nature. Then Schlatt thinks about himself. He thinks about the decaying veins that burn under his paper thin skin and feels shame, ugly, powerful shame, unfurl in his gut._

_“No,” he waves a hand through the air in dismissal, picking up his glass again, “no I don't, Quackity. The world is too fucked for that kind of shit.”_

_The smaller man tilts his head to the side and a smile graces the corners of his lips._

_“But then how can evil exist if there is no good to make it that way?”_

_Schlatt nearly chokes on his drink.)_

He gets into bed next to Quackity, wraps his arms around the smaller man, and tries to ignore the knowledge that he's soiling something so pure. 

Quackity will turn so he can face him and Schlatt will stuff the smaller’s face into his neck so he can't see his eyes. Schlatt will unzip Quackity's skin, starting at the base of his spine, and try to ignore the fact that Quackity’s breath has been doing the same thing to him this whole time.

It makes the moment Schlatt cocks his gun so much harder than it needs to be. He points the thing at Quackity’s face, he tells him to get the hell out, he calls him weak and calls him stupid. 

Schlatt is a gun, he realizes, but he is also holding a gun. And _God,_ if that wasn't a dangerous combination.

He wraps his finger arond the trigger, the _we’re tearing down this fucking white house_ feeling smooth and metalic under his pointer finger. He angles the gun and fires, fires where it'll hurt, fires where he knows Quackity will bleed and Schlatt won’t have to see his face. 

He hadn’t quite expected Quackity to shoot back, and again Schlatt is reminded that Quackity is also a weapon.

But _for fucks sake he's not a gun?_ A gun is lethal and a gun kills slowly, leaving time for blood to ooze over rotten, decaying skin. Quackity is not a slow killer. Schlatt doesn’t think Quackity would eat his corpse if he died like Schlatt knows he would do to the younger. He doesn’t think the smaller man would strangle him in his sleep like Schlatt has thought of doing to him so many times and he doesn’t think doesn’t think doesn't think because _oh God,_ has he done this to him?

Schlatt’s body slumps against what is remaining of the stone wall as he bleeds glorious crimson all over his hands and all over his clothing. His vision is too blurry to take in one last mental image of Quackity, all dressed up in skin, looking as painfully human and real as ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, uh- Quackity's POV next. It doesn't get better yet.


	2. inside the birdcage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse inside of Quackity's mind.

_(Behind every great love story, lies a great suicide)_

A lovesick and mopey part of Quackity’s brain weeps over Schlatt, weeps over the man that stands in the doorway, because he still remembers when they were in love.

They _were in love._

Quackity watches Schlatt leave the doorway to go sleep in a different room.

There was a time they were in love.

Quackity thinks about every time he cried over Schlatt, every time he trailed after him like a wounded puppy, until he couldn’t even remember what it felt like to have no leash around his neck.

Quackity wonders what would have happened had Schlatt not died. 

He knows now, with the way he’s become acutely aware that he flinches at the smell of alcohol, the way a suit and tie feel like a noose, and the way the sleek walls of the presidential cabinet immediately instill dread and shots of anxiety into his system, that him had Schlatt had been over long before he left for Pogtopia.

In a shameful way it’s embarrassing, embarrassing how he fell for each of Schlatt’s honey coated words and honey coated touches.

He knows essentially let Schlatt walk over him. But he loved him, _didn't he?_

After all of it, any fighting, any arguing, Quackity still somehow found himself in Schlatt’s arms.

Anything that had to happen- any anger, any yelling, and fucking or hitting or spitting- just happened, and then they were there, under the covers, no longer bodies, no longer humans.

It was a beautiful element to their relationship, no matter how grossly unhealthy, that Quackity reveled in. He relished the feeling of being stripped to nothing, of becoming nothing but skin only to become soulless and soulful and then human again by each ugly, unlovable morning.

Schlatt would pummel him so Quackity would hit back. He would look at the man in front of him in disgust and try to ignore the growing discomfort in his own stomach.

And so like a fool Quackity would lap up each sugary sweet word Schlatt uttered like some sort of degranged puppy. He would tuck his tail between his legs, and when he tried to run, Schlatt would pry him back to rest flush again his chest, close to his beating, alive heart.

A heart.

It’s such a complex narrative, such a complex organ, and sometimes Quackity hates it. Sometimes he hates that no matter how hard Schlatt kisses him or hits him or holds him, his heart still yearns to beat in proximity with the other man’s.

(Quackity will never forget the sound, the feeling, the _taste,_ of Schlatt’s heart. It stings the back of his teeth and sometimes, on nights when he hates himself the most, he swears he feels it in his chest, beating in tandem with his own.

He ignores the moments when the heart will slip out of sync and he’ll feel like he’s dying. He’ll claw at his chest until he bleeds dead, rotten spiders all over the empty sheets around him. He’ll think about Karl and Sapnap and choke on the paralyzing fear that comes hand and hand with knowledge that he’s eaten his dead husband’s heart. When Quackity wakes up to the smell of blood he’ll be reminded: reminded that he’s rotten.)

It’s easier like this, when they've been stripped of their skin, when they've been ridden of everything that makes them breathe. Quackity pretends not to notice the moments when Schlatt thinks he’s not looking, and his skin will start to creep back over his bones. 

The first time Schlatt tells him he doesn’t love him he’s completely drunk.

 _He’s only saying this because he’s drunk,_ he rationalizes, but both drunk and sober Schlatt have whispered saccharine coated _i love yous_ into his ears.

They’re fighting again, a horrifically violent feat that leaves the two lovers owning the same amount of knowledge about the other’s attack plans as their favorite foods and favorite ways to feel each other.

Sometimes Quackity doesn’t get why he stays. 

He doesn’t get it when Schlatt tears the rosary out of Quackity’s trembling hands and he gets it even less when Schlatt strikes him across his face with his left hand, wedding ring leaving a gash along his cheek.

Schlatt is bigger and stronger than Quackity, and so as he manhandles Quackity against a wall, Quackity draws his nails down Schlatt face.

“You mother fucker! I-“

“Quackity you little bitch, I am the one in control-“

“We SHARE, that’s what it means-“

“Share? We don’t fucking share? I’m not some bitch-“

Quackity remembers the way their wedding rings chimed when they hit each other. He remembers the feeling of sweat inside his suit, the feeling of Schlatt’s skin under his dull fingernails, the burn of bruises on his body, of Schlatt forcing him practically into the wall, but most of all, he remembers after.

They’d roughed each other before, hands and arms grabbing, moving, but never, _never,_ striking. 

Striking was damaging.

And people who are in love _do not_ strike each other.

(But as Schlatt pushes his hands into Quackity’s stomach in a grossly overcompensated form of self defense and Quackity bites down on every single one of the other man’s insecurities, he thinks this is the most in love he’s ever been.

It’s how it always ends, isn't it? The trope of cursed lovers was hardly a new tale, and Schlatt and Quackity, so unbearably human, were just as cursed as they were murders.

One always kills the other in the end, right?

_Right?)_

It’s silly, that none of the other unhealthy elements caused their scenario to dawn on him, but nonetheless, there they were.

Schlatt’s fist connected with the left side of Quackity’s face and immediately the room felt scarily quiet.

Quackity could hear nothing but a ringing in his ears and feel nothing but a dull ache starting to blossom across his cheek and a hot anxiety in his throat.

And Schlatt… Schlatt looked _horrified._

He had grabbed Quackity, wrapped him up in his arms, and dragged him to bed. 

Quackity remembers Schlatt peppering kisses across his face and neck till he fell asleep. 

_It would be the last,_ he reasoned.

(Quackity will never understand the lament of a sinner. He’s always going to be the righteous, no matter how much his soul burns away in the presence of Schlatt’s heart, and he's always going to be moving.

Quackity will also miss the connection that Schlatt is doing this out of self defense, out of a sick defence of Quackity’s own health. He had meant for Quackity to hurt, but never to bleed outside of his skin. Not when they were still human, not when they still looked like Quackity and Schlatt.)

How much more wrong could he have been?

Sometimes the fighting got so bad Quackity and Schlatt would have to hide from the rest of cabinet members.

Quackity remembers one time he hit back, like properly hit back, which had only served to provoke a full blown fight, loose skin curling and choking to hurt.

The two were yelling, constantly struggling to see who could be louder, rolling over each other until one could assume complete power.

But as always, Schlatt won. He was bigger and stronger and Quackity was smaller and weaker. 

(It had nothing to do with the fact that Schlatt had this look in his eyes like he wasn’t Schlatt, like he was genuinely enjoying it, and it scared the shit out of Quackity, who could still feel the pain radiating off of his lover in violent waves.)

Schlatt, presumably tired of Quackity’s struggles, had wrapped his fingers around Quackity’s neck and squeezed.

It was nothing like any sort of comforting pressure Quackity had felt before, nothing like the sickeningly exciting tease of death he’s sometimes toyed with.

It had felt like he was truly dying.

His whole body was burning and his head was aching. He remembers his eyes desperately trying to focus on something as Schlatt’s hair crept closer and closer to his face.

He remembers being scared. He remembers all encompassing and paralyzing terror overly saturating his body, from the tips of his quickly numbing fingertips to the corners of his head he dared not pass without his rosary in hand.

And then it stopped.

It stopped, and just as timid, as petrified, as Quackity himself had felt, a voice reached his ears.

“Quackity, oh God, _Quackity,_ ”

Hands had been hovering around his head and in his dazed state he watches, _feels,_ Schlatt roll off of him and shift to the other side of the bed. 

Through the haze in his brain, he can hear Schlatt muttering. 

Quackity still doesn’t know how to move.

He feels them, the hands, and sometimes, even now after Schlatt has been dead, when he panics he feels hands around his neck and he smells it: Kahlua and cigars, honey and sweat.

Schlatt had had his head in his hands, in his _almost a killer hands,_ before he slowly lays down next to Quackity.

He doesn’t move so Quackity doesn’t either, doesn’t know how to.

Time doesn’t seem to be moving, as if the Earth itself, as if space time itself, is paralyzed as well, falling into step with Quackity’s head.

In his terror induced daze Quackity is left to languish in the confines of his own mind. He wonders if Schlatt is there too. He thinks vaguely that it’s nice, but the smoke clears and suddenly it’s not.

A hand grasps Quackity’s own, which lays pliant by his right side. He pushes back against the hand before grabbing it.

The hand is sweaty. It probably tastes like salt and blood and ashes- their ashes.

He dares a glance at Schlatt.

He was bleeding, all beautiful and ugly and awful and crimson onto the pale sheets of their shared whitehouse bedroom.

Quackity is also bleeding. 

Schlatt’s hand had squeezed.

He remembers waking up and barely being able to move. He remembers Schlatt avoiding him until he couldn’t, at which point he had had enough time to carefully stow away any guilt or shame he felt. 

It was awful.

But it was also lovely.

Schlatt made him feel alive.

There was a time they were in love, when Schlatt would kiss him because he liked to kiss him and times when Quackity would playfully hit Schlatt up the side of his head while cursing him out in Spanish.

Maybe it’s why he stayed as long as he did, because at the end of the day, Quackity knew one thing: Schlatt was dead long before the night in the Camarvan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes. I've got more chapters written up for later, including the heart scene and some Technoblade, that im excited to share.


	3. until death do we weep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not the happiest with this chapter, but I'm excited for tomorrow’s chapter, so bear with me!

He’s not quite sure when Quackity started to become a prophet in his mind.

As much as Schlatt dedicated his time to convincing the smaller that he was the one in power, it did nothing to change the fact that Schlatt knew he followed every single one of Quackity’s words like a holy religion.

He ignores the feeling of Quackity’s eyes burning abrasions all over the top layer of his skin when he turns his back to the man. Schlatt pushes any semblance of warmth down to the ground at his feet and stomps, pushing his shoes into it until it lays just as rotten as Schlatt is.

Because Quackity does not love him. He can’t.

Even when Quackity leaves him for Pogtopia, a feat which Schlatt convinces himself he’s grateful for, seeing as he literally _begged_ for it to happen, he couldn’t bear to admit to himself the possibility that Quackity could have loved him back.

Schlatt knows that for people like him, hope is pitiful and hope is weak.

But most notably, hope is a weapon and hope is a killer.

Hope is the smiling image of loveless infatuation that suffocates Schlatt as he sleeps and hope is the sight of Quackity coming back to him with a journal in hand.

There had been a split second, when Quackity held the book over to him, that it had appeared to be an Olive Branch. However, as soon as Quackity spoke, the illusion had shattered and Schlatt felt the urge to prove that he’s not broken over the man’s absence.

Hope feels nice, so inevitably, Schlatt crushes it and breaks it down before he gives it a chance to prove him wrong.

The last time Schlatt sees Quackity they are standing on opposite sides of an invisible line, body’s hunched and tense on the battlefield.

Quackity had looked anxious and determined, but the aura of fear that subtly seeped off his body did not escape Schaltt’s fleeting grasps of consciousness. 

He wants to tear his hair out, tear it out and bury it in Quackity’s chest, hide it in his wings, because the small and heartbroken part of Schlatt feels betrayed. He feels betrayed with the way Fundy is yelling at him and he feels broken with the way Quackity is perched across from him. 

Can Quackity also feel his heart physically breaking?

He swings a bottle down onto Fundy’s arm and Quackity gasps, moving forward to shield him.

Perhaps he can’t feel it.

A part of Schlatt weeps and a part of Schlatt rejoices.

Perhaps his heart was already broken, crumbling and bleeding between Schlatt’s ugly, unlovable fingers.

As the growing pain in his chest and in his head begins to overtake his senses, there's a moment where Schlatt just feels stupid, feels stripped and bare, that he, for even one second, assumed he could be powerful and strong without Quackity.

But here's the thing; Schlatt _knows_ he’s going to die. He knows he's going to die the second he wakes up and the second he steps out onto the battlefield. He’s going to go down a dictator, overthrown by rebels, children, by equally as _awful and fucked_ humans, to finally rest. 

When he leaves, Quackity can finally become whole again, no longer tethered to the miniscule and rotten ground next to Schlatt. The man will be free and the man will be happy.

It makes the guilt in his chest feel lighter, although maybe that's the alcohol.

“When I die,” he knows he looks angry, looks grossly prideful for a man who's falling into shambles at his enemies’ (lover’s) feet, “this country goes down with me.”

Voices around him raise in volume but Schlatt can't help the growing chasm in his chest that pulsates in time with Quackity’s visibly quickened breathing from his unsure position in front of him. He looks so nice like this, so pretty, all determined and heart broken, and Schlatt is reminded again why he loves him.

It was stupid to think anything could ever have gotten better, and never before had Schlatt hated his lack of control when he indulged in all of the sickly sweet moments of their horribly raw love more than he did in that moment.

He feels Quackity’s rib cage crumbling in his hands and suddenly can’t bear to wait for death to come, to take over his body and let him finally be at peace. 

Tommy is standing directly in front of Schlatt, with everyone gathering around him like he's some sort of circus attraction, leaving him feeling like a wounded predator being hunted. It’s sort of ironic, Schlatt realizes in a glimpse of humor, that here's how he's going to die. Not at Quackity’s hand, not at Tommy’s or Wilbur’s or anyone in Pogtopia’s; he's going to die by his own, wretched, disgusting hand.

Clutching onto Quackity’s rib cage, Schlatt relishes in the knowledge that he’s going to die, right here, in this god forsaken Camarvan like its a fucking stage. 

But _Quackity._

He doesn’t mean for the pain to soak through his last words to his lover, the _you left me_ holding none of the venom Schlatt had intended. 

And now he's going to watch. 

He’s going to watch Schlatt die, watch him burn and retch as he finally lets the carcass inside his bones seep through to the top layer of his skin.

Quackity looks like he's going to throw up and Schlatt _hates it._

He’s supposed to be bitter towards Schlatt, he's supposed to be glad he's dying, but the man in front of him wields his pain like a knife and just stands. Schlatt wants to reach his hands out and cover his face, making it so the smaller man will be forced to rely on his primal instincts of feeling, the ones that would tell him to run away.

The face Quackity is making claws its way through the messy button job of Schlatt’s shirt and buries its hands in the skin beneath. 

It's flooring and it takes his breath away.

One of the worst pains Schlatt has ever felt erupts in his chest and there's a moment of blind terror where Schlatt realizes he’s about to die in front of the one man he ever truly cared about. He shoots at Quackity, trembling hands barely able to steady the bow, in a last ditch effort to shield the holy man in front of him from the venomous nature of Schlatt’s final sin.

Every touch, every kiss, every argument, and every single goddamn moment Schlatt spent with Quackity suddenly feels so meaningless, so unimportant in the scope of things. It’s all melted away, cascading down their bones in a meaningless jumble of prayer and sin, and pools on the floor of the Camarvan. It creeps up the walls and drowns out everything but Quackity’s face.

It was all nothing, all _for_ nothing, because as Schlatt leans slumped against the wall, feeling the life ebb out of his body, he finally understands that none of the theatrics meant anything. It had all boiled down to this, to two lovers standing across from each other, one holding a gun and both nursing broken, bleeding hearts.

There's noise bouncing off of the walls and slinking into Schatt’s ears, but he sees nothing and hears nothing except Quackity.

Quackity’s face begins to blur and Schlatt vaguely wonders when Quackity’s hands stopped squeezing his chest.

His perspective of the room changes as shapes and colors blur into a psychedelic mess of prayer and repentance.

Pain explodes, ravishing through his body like a pack of coyotes, a flock of vultures, and before the world is given a chance to focus again, Schlatt’s attention is drawn to the sound of a gunshot.

Then pain stops and Quackity screams, someone else screams.

_Wasn’t Schlatt the only one holding a gun?_

_They are happy,_ Schlatt lets the dull ringing close over his ears, but if they are happy, why does Quackity sound so _horrified?_

In his last moment he wants to call out, but the weight of a gun, a gun that smells like Schlatt’s own rotten flesh, like alcohol, pins his hand to the floor.

He will no longer breathe and he will no longer sin. 

_(“You should put that thing away next time we have sex,” Quackity tilts his chin up towards Schlatt from his position tucked against his chest, “don’t you think it’s a little, ya know, off putting?”_

_Quackity lets out a tired laugh, breath fanning across Schlatt’s sweat soaked carcass._

_“My rosary? It’s not doing anything.”_

_“But isn’t this like, the epitome of sin?”_

_“The epitome?”_

_His confusion makes Schlatt slightly angry, “Schlatt we just, we just had sex? We’re also technically married?”_

_Schlatt feels bare, like Quackity’s shining eyes are undressing his very skin, and he hates it, hates how the smaller man manages to peel back each thrashing, ugly layer of skin until Schlatt is sure he can see the decay residing in the marrow of his bones._

_“Schlatt, the point of God is that like, at the end of our time, we all have something to come home to. We all have something waiting for us when we die.”_

_“Sounds like a scam,” Schlatt chokes out, trying to quell the violent earnestly that wants to drip all over the tender boy at his side, “I ain’t falling for that.”_

_“Whatever old man, I just hope there’s peace out there for us.”)_

There are hands on his face. They feel warm.

Is it God?

 _No,_ his weeping heart whispers back at him, _it’s Quackity._

Someone is crying and above Schlatt the angels sing in their holy, demented matrimony.

And then there's nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my favorite chapter, but it's the last Schlatt centered POV, so it was necessary. Quackity tomorrow! Weston is _killing_ me on the epicsmp, he's so funny.


	4. dr. frankenstein

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so Quackity eats his dead husband's heart....

Quackity doesn't know when, or even if, it’s going to get better.

He wonders if something would have changed had he not left Schlatt, if he had not fled, but most importantly, Quackity wonders if any of it was ever true.

It feels so stupid to miss someone who hurt him so much.

At his lover, his _husband’s_ funeral, he feels maniacal and he feels on top of the world. The overwhelming grief in his heart somehow translates to a hot and coursing venom that evokes a sick and twisted joy in the front of his mind.

Schlatt’s death brings an unintelligible weight to the front of his heart.

It’s hard to justify, hard for him to rationalize, the unexplainable sadness he feels towards the arguably terrible man’s death. Schlatt had hurt him, hurt Tubbo, a _child,_ and slowly started to open the cavarness hole in his chest.

He dances over his husband’s coffin and chants, singing out relief soaked words that sprinkle little pieces of saliva over the body below him. 

A passive part of Quackity’s brain hopes his spit will act like fertilizer, the words simply a disguise, a vessel, for his saliva, which will grow new and grotesque flora of scarily humane nature out of Schlatt's skin.

His calls of, _“this mother fuckers dead!”_ bleed into the charged atmosphere and Quackity can’t quite feel any of his limbs as he prances around the place in a sort of sickening, ritualistic dance.

But what can he do when there's no theatrics?

As the acidic energy begins to ebb and is replaced by a lethargic grief, Quackity collapses over the coffin of his husband, and for the first time since he left for Pogtopia, Quackity cries.

He cries ugly, gut wrenching sobs as the gravity of the situation weighs down on the back of his head and forces his neck down. He cries loud and ugly into the wood that encases Schlatt like a cage and lets his fingers fumble around the latches that binds it shut.

Sliding the lid off is almost one of the worst decisions he’s made in his whole life.

If he thinks hard enough, he can slip far enough into his grief induced stupor and pretend Schlatt is simply sleeping, that he'll pull the smaller into his arms and mumbe into the top of his hair words of endearment.

But Quackity can’t pretend.

As he splays his fingers out over his husband's waxy, doll-like skin, the situation feels so absurd that it almost doesn't feel real at all.

But it is real.

It's so real that the chilled burn of the dead man's flesh doesn't leave the underside of his fingertips for a week, and even when it does it imprints itself onto a part of Quackity’s brain he leaves to fester.

The agony of his situation feels so uncontrollable, and Quackity vaguely wonders if anybody else in the damn city can feel it, or if he’s the only one. With trembling fingers, he tears through the buttons of Schlatt’s shirt and lays his fingertips over Schlatts chest.

The world stops.

Quackity’s mind and heart stutter, stop, then return full force in a messy stampede of unfurling panic.

Is it beating? Is Schlatt’s heart _beating?_

He can feel it, shaking and seizing below Schlatt’s skin, desperately trying to get out. In a moment of blind horror, Quackity fears the heart is going to burst and rupture through his chest, successfully killing his husband another time.

Feeling panic start to take over his senses, Quackity acts on the dangerous concoction of sorrow and fear that brews in the base of his skull and the back of his throat.

The initial scratch is easy.

His blunt nails scrabble over tough muscle and tissue, scourging through it like a rabid dog.

_(“Of course dogs are better than cats!”_

_Quackity can’t even keep the partially offended gasp from escaping his mouth._

_“What?! Tommy, are you crazy?!”_

_The blonde laughs, all high pitched and joyous, before diving into a rapid explanation as of why. Quackity, unable to quell the argumentative part of him, speaks back at him._

_“Big Q, a cat will eat your body when you die, but a dog won't! Man’s best friend, man’s best friend, what do you like? Being eaten by a cat? Hmm?”_

_It's clear neither of them are going anywhere, but as Tommy is pulled away by Wilbur, expression matching one of a child who’s just been told off by his babysitter, Quackity knows it was worth it._

_“Dogs! Can you believe it, Schlatt?”_

_Schlatt had chuckled and shook his head in a way that almost seemed to insinuate fondness._

_“Jesus, you really can't trust the British with anything.”_

_Quackity laughs out a series of, “too true, too true,” before nudging Schlatt's arm with his elbow._

_“Say Schlatt, you're a bit of a cat guy aren't you?”_

_“Yea,” a shit eating grin takes over his face as he pushes his chest out, “I’d say I'm a pretty big conessuor of pussy.”_

_Their easy laughter, their still somewhat teenage love, had yet to have been tainted by the sheer prowess of it, and it's time like these, before the cabinet, before the rosary felt like a weight in his pocket, that Quackity wonders if they were ever truly real._

_Schlatt looks at Quackity with hazy eyes._

_“But I also think puppies are pretty cute.”)_

By the time Quackity has torn through the dry and already decaying carcass of his dead husband, his breathing is quite heavy.

But when his fingers enclose around the soft and still beating tissue of Schlatt’s heart, it’s all worth it.

With a desperate edge of force, he pulls the organ out and cradles it to his chest. It beats and spasms in rhythm with Quackity’s thoughts, speeding up as his thoughts grow more panicked and slowing down when his thoughts start to droop like wilting lilacs.

“Schlatt, Schlatt, I am sorry, I am _so sorry,_ I left, I left you,” the grief is spilling over his lips before he can realize it.

Choked sobs aid the awful song of the grieving man as he leans forward so his forehand is resting against the dissected chest of his husband. The heart pulses in his hands.

“Did- did I do this? I am so sorry, I should have, maybe if I would have, I-”

As the acceptance of the situation dawns on him, mindless blubbering halts and the heart in his hands seems to slow.

“Schlatt, Schlatt, Schlatt,” he murmurs his name like a mantra, pushing his palms together as if somehow he could squeeze the heart into beating again.

“Schlatt, Schlatt, no no no no.”

The panic that was resting momentarily dormant in his chest returns full force, rendering Quackity unable to breathe over the roaring sound of perpetual white noise.

Schlatt’s corpse glows in the pale moonlight, still and unmoving, and Quackity, subjected to a fit of blind panic, does the only thing he thinks of to save the heart.

He eats it.

When his teeth first close over the cold and tough exterior, he remembers the time he first gave Schlatt a piece of his own heart. 

The man had accepted it, face covered in shock, as he tucked it into his cheek.

_The safest place to keep your heart is in your lover's cheek, tucked safely under rows of sharp and pointed teeth, ones that will never puncture and never break the piece of flesh so enticingly placed between them._

Schlatt’s heart is chewy and tough, coating the back of his molars and clogging his nose with a scent that matches the rotten taste. 

He eats it, every last piece of it, until he’s sure it's stored away in perfect security in his stomach and in his cheek. In front of him, Schlatt’s corpse doesn't move and Quackity suddenly feels sick. 

Lethargy and a fatigued feeling of cold warp around his body, and thoroughly exhausted, Quackity keels over forward and falls asleep on the man’s freshly opened chest.

If when he wakes up the next day he vomits and gags at himself, at his own disgusting acts, he pretends not to acknowledge it. If he notices that he wakes up in his bed to an early morning visit from a confused and worried Karl, he pretends not to acknowledge it. When Tubbo gives him a knowing look, he pretends even more that he doesn't acknowledge it.

But the horrific nature of Quackity’s growing disgust and self directed hatred do not wane in the slightest.

 _Oh God,_ Quackity keeps his fingers sealed tightly over his lips, not letting any breath or heart or cries escape, _I've just eaten my husband’s heart._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will introduce some Technoblade!


	5. forget while the forgettings good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quackity realizes he doesn't understand himself or other's understandings of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things start to move, but not too much.

The weeks after Schlatt’s passing, Quackity hovers in limbo, unable to tell whether or not his feet are resting on solid ground, and does his best not to mourn someone he so _dearly_ hated.

Quackity falls asleep to the sound of Schlatt’s voice and wakes up to the feeling of his hands around his neck, heart, and on his lips. He kisses Schlatt in his sleep the same way he kills Schlatt in his dreams, but worst of all, in his nightmares, Schlatt hangs, body holy and transparent against the bloody nature of his deeds.

Hands fisted into clumps of black hair, Quackity lets his fingers frame his skull in a desperate attempt to ensure there aren’t horns protruding out of the bone.

He constantly feels strange, with the way he’s practically floating around the cabinet hallways of newly rebuilt L’manberg. It almost feels as if when Quackity ate Schlatt’s heart, he had given up his own life, as if he’s the dead man walking and his husband is the live man buried. 

When Tubbo gestures to his new desk, smooth and dark and laden with various pens and office supplies, Quackity tries not to feel like he’s several months younger and giddy with excitement. 

_(“Baby, there’s so much more to you than a pretty face.”_

_Schlatt’s voice is honeyed and dripping all over Quackity’s face from his position above him. It wettens his hair and bleeds into the sweat that covers his bare chest._

_Quackity squirms and lets out a breathless huff as Schlatt leans down to lick the sugar sweet words off his skin._

_He lets them linger on his lips, passing them over to Quackity’s when they kiss and he spits them back, all over his body, before Quackity can understand what's happening._

_The words make Quackity drool, the smooth and sticky substance pooling on the desk next to his face, leaving a trail of spit down the side of his cheek. Little words and whimpers travel down the trail like holy men on a pilgrimage, and Quackity finds himself reinventing the entire basis of what it means for something to be non-sequitur.)_

Mornings now start early or whenever the tired presidential cabinet can drag themselves out of bed, and in those hazy, sleep soaked mornings, Tubbo will pass him and smile. He’ll grab Quackity aside and ask him how he’s doing, so nice and so unmistakingly Tubbo that Quackity can’t help but feel guilty about his never wavering discomfort around the boy.

 _It’s not Schlatt,_ he reasons, but when Tubbo’s face grows more ashen by the day, Quackity doesn’t know how to choke down the fear.

He sees him. He sees him everywhere and in everything.

Sometimes Quackity wonders if when he ate his husband’s heart, the blood inside of it had washed over his eyes and cast the world in a permanent red tint.

He tilts his head to the side and waits for the image of horns above Tubbo’s head, his own head, to falter. They don’t.

Quackity wonders whether Tubbo can see it or not. 

Can he see the blood pooling against his lower lashes?

When Quackity comes home dead tired in the early hours of the morning to find Karl asleep on the couch, sitting up waiting for him, Quackity wonders whether Karl can smell it. With the amount of time the two spend together and the amount of copper that suffocates his airways, there is no way it doesn’t linger around him like a stale cologne.

Everything seems to smell like blood these days.

Even the sky bleeds, bleeds ugly and awful all over their perfectly imperfect human and inhuman bodies, dousing them in the crimson glow that constantly encases his thoughts.

When Tommy is exiled, Quackity wants so badly to sympathize with Tubbo, for the boy is stronger than he ever was, but betrayal, no matter the caliber, burns in his chest.

He lets himself bleed, and in a moment of self absorbed hatred, he yells at Tubbo and bleeds all over the outside of L’manberg’s walls. It’s a pitiful show of contempt that's being used to disguise the pure shock flowing through his veins, the subtle jealousy that Tubbo was able stand his own against his best friend.

A victim. Tommy was a victim, a mere pawn claimed by the ruthless nature of animalistic hunt.

(Quackity is _not,_ by _any means,_ a victim. He’s heard Karl whisper it before, in hushed exchanges with Sapnap, and it makes his blood boil.)

In response, Quackity spreads his broken, golden wings and drags Karl and Sapnap to an area outside of L’manberg, outside of the politics, and forces them to build a safe haven.

It was a joke at first, truly, but Quackity isn’t good at letting things stay that way.

He laughs at the ugly nature of their messy builds and laughs at the dirt that crumbles and parts in wake of the rushing stream of water cascading down from their perfect little island. It’s a funny place to make fun of, and desperate to preserve the warm nature of their dynamic, Quackity ate up the jokes and capitalized on their effect.

It was a joke. Nothing more, nothing less.

But then George is dethorned, biting back any sort of emotive response with a dulled gaze and at his side Quackity feels the moment Sapnap finally understands that he has always been a predetermined puppet.

It hurts. It hurts so Quackity does the only thing he knows how to.

He fights.

Quackity argues with Dream, twists words into loosely constructed narratives until he’s fumbling for a rationale, but it doesnt matter, none of it _fucking matters_ because _goddamnit_ if Quackity wasn’t going to let his favorite people fall down in front of him again.

They’re arguing when suddenly, in a tremble of a golden wing, a shift in the position of a porcelain mask, Dream is yelling. Not just a raised voice, a poised intonation at the end of a sentence, but an actual menacing yell. It’s the type of yell that leaves your throat sore. Quackity knows how they feel and more noticeably, how they sound.

Dream yells at him and suddenly it’s not Dream, it’s Schlatt, and there’s a brief moment where even the looming figure of Eret has horns.

 _A recurring theme,_ Quackity bitterly thinks when a trembling Karl hauls him home that night. 

The image of Schlatt keeps him up at night and it doesn’t get better. 

When Technoblade swings a pickaxe clean through his cheek and through his teeth, Quackity lavishes in the rotten feeling of wanting to cry over Schlatt all over again. In a moment of some of the worst physical agony Quackity has ever felt, he cries over somebody else.

The week following the run in with Technoblade feels ghostly and shameful, and he wonders if Karl can feel the unrestrained discontent that leeches onto anything in its proximity.

But nonetheless, it’s an interesting development.

 _Technoblade_ is an interesting development.

Quackity has always been a lover, not a fighter, but these days the words are so intrinsically connected he doesn't have the energy to try and pry them apart anymore. 

He weeps over his dead husband and weeps over the bleeding jaw he’s nursing.

Karl cradles Quackity to his chest when he wakes up unable to breathe, holding him like he’s a dead man and Quackity, immersed in his own wretched self pity, wraps his hands around an imaginary but _oh so real_ heart and cries over the blood rushing through his body.

He finds death doesn’t scare him as much as it used to. Death is natural, as natural as life, and in a sickening way, all the more alluring and promising.

 _Closure,_ death hums into Quackity’s trembling fingers.

Quackity remembers the first time he didn't cower in Technoblade’s presence.

It had been after the incident in the Final Control Room, which left Quackity with a peachy scar snaking up his cheek, when the two had their first encounter. 

Standing there, he doesn’t feel like a butcher, but he doesn’t feel like Quackity though either. He just feels nonexistent, feels unreal.

If all it took for Quackity to grow up was get a pickaxe pierced through the roof of his mouth he would have gladly done it to himself back in the White House.

Riling Technoblade up, Quackity puffs out his wings and watches the other man’s eyes twitch and his ears flick. It only took a few seconds for Technoblade to have his glimmering netherite sword resting under Quackity’s chin, body backed completely up against the slightly sticky wood of Tubbo’s bee sanctuary. 

Quackity doesn’t quite know why he’s doing it.

His heart is still unashamedly bleeding in his chest and he knows the pain must be glowing out through his chest, because the pure rawness of his emotions makes a complex expression cross Technoblade’s face. 

To Quackity’s surprise, it’s not pity. 

Quackity has never been more grateful of a man he thought he wanted to kill.

Technoblade threatens him in low voices of guttural hostility that don't match the bored and still slightly confused nature of his face. It would be so funny if Quackity just titled his head to the side, collapsing fully onto the blade.

He wants to laugh. Laugh because for once _he's the one_ making the other uncomfortable, and over something as seemingly miniscule as his own emotions? It feels entirely comedic.

The taller hybrid shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot, expression quickly stiffening as he realizes Quackity isn't going to fight back. 

“Are you,” Technoblade doesn't laugh like he usually would, “letting me just- kill you?”

“I mean, it would appear so, Techno. C’mon man! I thought you were smart!”

The grin taking over his face is starting to cause his muscles to ache. He wishes Technoblade would just get on with it and stop tormenting him like this, like he wants Quackity to trick himself into thinking he’s talking to Schlatt.

“But be careful,” Quackity smiles against the cool edge of the netherite sword that's against his cheek, “keep it up and I might fall in love with you!”

Technoblade had grunted in disgust, letting the winged man crumble to the ground without his support, and _wow, why is nobody else laughing? That was a good one!_

A brief moment of what almost looks like sympathy passes over the taller man's face before he tsks and turns away.

“Please, don’t be so pathetic.”

 _Oh,_ he thinks, _interesting._

Quackity walks home and tries his best to process the interaction, but draws no parallels between his recent interaction and his known Technoblade vocabulary.

Hell, Quackity didn't even think he was remotely scared of the man in that moment.

The shadows had cast threatening shapes over the cooling grass and created the illusion of ram horns hanging over his head and over every little flower that poked its way up above the dewy blades.

Quackity whips his head around at the sound of a snapping twig, feet stumbling over each other at the unexpected change. 

There’s nothing there.

He swears he hears Schlatt whistle through his teeth.

It’s nothing.

Quackity exhales a long, shaky breath.

Schlatt’s nothing, not anymore.

But even when Quackity gets home it’s undeniable that he’s _everywhere._ He’s everywhere and he hates it, hates himself. He’s everywhere and in moment pure unrestrained terror Quackity sees Schlatt in the mirror across from him.

He thinks about Technoblade’s sword against his throat and wakes up, again, to the sensation of Schlatt’s fingers closing around his windpipe.

The devil bites dirty, and _dear Quackity_ is no exception.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe I'll actually progress some plot tomorrow, anyways, hope you enjoyed this.


	6. cara santucha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quackity starts to feel again, even if it first come in the worst possible way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cara santucha roughly means to do something with a saint's face by pretending to have a saint's face or appearing saintly.

It feels weird not being scared of Technoblade.

The knowledge fills him with a strange power that makes Quackity feel as if he’s on top of the world while simultaneously under it, as if he’s woven into the soil and all its sprouting, decaying, roots. Quackity can’t quite pinpoint the exact moment he stopped being scared of Technoblade. Sure the man frightens him, but he’s no longer paralyzed, his primal flight or flight instinct no longer telling him to get the hell out.

Ever since Schlatt has died Quackity finds a lot of things don't scare him that much anymore.

Maybe it’s because he grew up and maybe it’s because he doesn’t care so much about keeping himself safe.

It's a weird train of thought, one Quackity had never had time to entertain before, but when Technoblade glances at wings in almost pity, the hybrid realizes how _fucked_ he truly is.

He tries not to hate Phil, who’s wings expand behind him with a sort of imposing elegance, the same way he tries not to hate Tubbo who ghosts around him like he’s scared Quackity will snap.

But another thing that comes with grieving, is exhaustion.

An Quackity, _Quackity,_ is too tired to fucking care.

He’s too tired to care so he doesn’t. He doesn’t care that he can’t reign in his misplaced and impulsive hatred and he doesn't care that he can’t stop his growing interest in Technoblade.

 _Why didn’t I do this earlier,_ Quackity muses when he goes home feeling the same he did when he left.

 _No really,_ he ponders when he wakes up as brainless as he was when he first fell asleep and when he walks in his dreams (nightmares?).

Another development is that Quackity feels _self aware._

He’s aware of the glances Karl throws his way when he wakes up and wanders through the city like a corpse and he’s aware of the fear that shudders off of Ranboo’s body in increasing frequencies. 

But he just doesn't care.

This must be how Schlatt feels, he reasons, and Quackity doesn’t understand why the thought of dying to be with him again doesn’t scare him.

It’s just the way love works. Love is a murderer, a killer, as gentle or as violent as the one who wields it. 

Love is a poison, so therefore being in love is also a poison. 

Dying would be relievingly easy, and Quackity wonders when the rotten taste of poison had started to leave his mouth. But he’s still in love with Schlatt, he _has to be_ , because Schlatt still hurts.

Quackity wonders when he, doused in the overwhelming fumes of their lethal and loving elixir, killed their blessed poisoner.

“It’s just how it works, Technoblade,” he says in exasperation one crisp evening, “I don’t expect you to understand what it’s like to love someone so much you want to kill them.”

Technoblade shifts and tilts his head.

“Well, Quackity, do you love Karl?”

“Yes, of course! What kinda of stupid questions is that?”

“Do you... love him a lot?”

“Yes,” anger hangs off of his tongue, “ _what the fuck?_ ”

Facing completely towards him, Technoblade raises his eyebrows, clearly unimpressed despite how invested he seems to be in the conversation.

“Do you want to kill Karl, Quackity?”

His stomach sinks.

“What kind of question- you know what? Just shut up, shut up, okay?”

Quackity pulls his wings closer around his body, “it’s just- it’s just how it works, I don’t make the rules.”

“Quackity, that's not, that's not,” Technoblade looks horrified and it feels so uncharacteristic it makes Quackity feel stupid, “that's not love.”

“Don't patronize me, Blade,” the air feels stingingly cool.

“I don’t think I ever said I was sorry, I was simply saying that love-”

“Ya know what? Whatever. What would you even know, Techno.”

Quackity thinks about Philza’s warm smiles and Tommy’s boisterous love that he passes off as theatrics. He would know. Of course Technoblade would know.

His stomach sinks when Technoblade doesn't take the bait. He looks at him, down through the curl of his lashes, and then huffs out a quick breath.

He doesn't respond. 

Quackity thinks it’s unfair that Technoblade, the man who publicly murdered a sixteen year old and unleashed a pack of withers over their nation, is the same person who got to go home to a warm and caring father while Quackity was busy sweeping up piles of molten flesh. 

It’s not fair, but it’s also far too energy consuming for Quackity to be bothered to focus on it. 

They get along surprisingly well, in a sort of fun way that makes Quackity feel excited.

He doesn't think he's ever going to forgive Technoblade, not fully, but a part of his consciousness allows him to acknowledge that the two of them have more in common than what feels right to admit.

After all, he’s somewhat of a killer now. 

Quackity wills himself not to give in so easily. 

_He won't forgive him and nothing will change,_ he laments. They will be butcher and animal and prey and predator until one of them finally bleeds past the point of no return.

Then one night, one cold and unassuming night, Technoblade finds him partially buried in the snow.

A grief stricken part of a partially sober Quackity had taken control of his limbs and steered him out into the snow. He had wanted someone, wanted Schlatt, but more than anything he felt an out of control yearning for just _something._ He wanted something to happen, anything, because Quackity feels sick of waking up like he's on death row and sick of praying like he's mourning.

( _You are mourning,_ Quackity’s heart whispers to him.

 _You better be,_ Schlatt’s heart mutters back.

 _Of course you are,_ and Quackity crushes it between the tendrils of neurons that entrap his brain, slicing through them before any new and painful synaptic connections can form.)

By the time Quackity is aware of where he is he's already too far gone.

His wings groan and tremble in protest to the cold nature of the icy winds and his fingertips mindlessly throb.

But Quackity can barely feel it.

It’s strangely familiar, the feeling of feeling so much you feel nothing.

It’s free, _he’s_ free, and so Quackity pushes his feet apart in the thick snow and laughs, laughs like a child and rejoices at the cold induced clarity that spreads through his brain like a wildfire. He wonders whether or not the wildfire will burn out of his skin, igniting his feathers and melting all of the surrounding snow.

It would be nice. He would die without his wings, the only thing left to signify he ever had them would be the collection of burnt flesh and small, fragile bones that would huddle around his corpse as if someone had thrown flowers all over his dead body.

Quackity opens his mouth and screams. He screams until he’s laughing hysterically and he can't feel his throat. Awkwardly integrated chirps melt into the background like a choir singing in a slightly out of tune harmony.

He screams and screams and screams until his throat stops burning and his chest stops feeling so _fucking_ heavy.

And suddenly Quackity can't hear himself.

_Is he dying?_

The snow feels so cool enclosing his body in a gentle embrace.

Quackity is so, _so cold._

_Is somebody talking?_

There's a sound of something shuffling, so quiet that he's able to infer he's no longer screaming, and then warm hands surround his upper body. The warmth offers such a harsh juxtaposition to the freezing nature of his skin that his first thought is that he actually is burning. 

He’s being pulled up, and the arms that wrap around his body are strong and sturdy. 

Quackity’s sense of reality is too far gone for him to be able to discern reality from fantasy. So when the hands softly and securely push his head into the crook of a neck and keep him hugged against their chest, Quackity can feel tears of joy pooling at the corner of his eyes.

Only one person has ever held him like that before.

“I knew you’d come back for me,” the tears sear the insides of his eyelids like smoke, sizzling when they glide down his cheeks.

The man, most definitely Schlatt, doesn't respond. He just gruffly moves forward and keeps his hold as unwavering as ever.

His body rocks in tandem with his husband’s steps and the numb fuzziness in his ears starts to hum him to sleep.

After not too long, Quackity’s ebbing consciousness is pulled back into the present as the sound of a door creaking open stirs his interest. Warmth rushes over Quackity’s body, and too cold to even tremble, he involuntarily lets out a breathy trill that peters out into a tired sigh.

He’s being set down, he realizes, and in his delirious state, Quackity can’t even tell where he’s just been placed. 

But it doesn't matter, he trusts his husband.

He must be making noise, half in protest at the retreating warmth of his husband and half in contentment at the warmth of whatever he's laying on, for a hand pushes onto his shoulder and a voice whispers.

“Hush hush, you're safe.”

Quackity reaches blindly towards the voice, even though he’s too delirious in the moment to tell whether he’s actually managed to move his limbs.

“Schlatt,” his voice mirrors the fact that he's been screaming, making it sound pitifully desperate, “stay.”

Silence engulfs the room. Quackity can’t tell whether his eyes are open or not. He almost wants to ask again, but the silence in the room feels too heavy to break.

A warmth frames his hand, tugging slightly, and soon his own hand is being pulled off of Schlatt to be carefully set across his own chest.

Fingers ghost momentarily over his body as a blanket is tugged over his sleepy form. They pause briefly before his forehead, then hesitantly run through his hair.

And then the hands are gone.

“You’ll be safe here, Birdie.”

Quackity wakes up on a couch in the middle of the arctic and feels the worst he has in days. In his sleep filled haze, Quackity had found himself unable to tell whether he was actually sleeping or simply suspended in a dream like realm. He had seen colors behind his eyelids, felt them too, and when he first opened his eyes they acted like stained glass stitched into his cornea.

The numbness gone, Quackity gives himself a moment to revel in his own self hatred. He had felt so much in the past 24 hours he doesn't think he’ll ever be able to fall back into the emotionless limbo he’d been in before.

He doesn’t really remember last night, but based on the face Technoblade throws at him when he tries to slip out early into the evening, it could not have been good.

“Thank you, Techno, I don’t quite,” he trails off, absently rubbing his hand over the door frame, “I don't quite remember what I said but-“

“Do you want to know?”

“No. No no, for fucks sake I don’t wanna embarrass myself more, Jesus Christ.”

Technoblade nods his head.

In that moment he almost seems to be regarding him like one would regard a friend, an under glow of genuine concern gracing his expression.

A traitorous warmth unfurls in his stomach.

“Goodbye, Technoblade.”

“Bye, Quackity.”

Quackity lets the busy nature of the violent winds engulf his form as he trudges out into the snow. He is only four steps into his journey when he hears someone hollar at him, voice loud and gravelly.

“Left! Quackity, you have to go left!”

Flipping Technoblade off, Quackity shoves his hands further into his pockets and turns to face the other way towards L’manberg.

_Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid-_

He’ll see Karl’s smiling face when he gets home-

_Stupid stupid stupid stupid-_

Sapnap will throw an arm around his shoulders and George will follow-

_Stupid stupid stupid stupid-_

He tugs at the hair peeking out from his beanie and absently mindedly acknowledges that it felt so much better when Schlatt would do it.

_Stupid stupid stupid-_

These are good things. 

_Stupid stupid-_

Good things aren’t made for Quackity, he lost that right when he killed his husband, when he first spread his wings and dove upwards into the night sky.

_Stupid-_

But maybe, Quackity feels the cold torment his skin in less intensity as the slope of the ocean comes into view.

But maybe, murder can be gentle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will bring some more Sap and Karl, then Phil in the one after because _wings_.


	7. murmur murmur, coward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quackity contemplates his growing nightmares, lack of sleep, confusing relationships, and the depleting condition of his wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep writing scenes then instead of moving the plot towards the goal I just turn that scene into a chapter.... I swear there's Phil in the next one... I don't really like this chapter but I'm done agonizing over it so here it is!

_“Let's set the mood, Quackity, let's set the mood,” ram horns gleem under the glow of the lanterns that hang in the corners of their room, “say, whaddya think?”_

_Quackity pretends to think, as if he doesn't already know exactly what he wants, and shifts his head toward the taller man standing at the foot of their bed. He cocks his head to the side._

_“Hmmm,” Quackity drags out the syllable, leaning even more so his neck is open._

_He watches Schlatt’s eyes narrow as he grins._

_“I see,” the words are growled, “so we’re playing it like this eh, sweetie pumpkin cheeks?”_

_Quackity lets out a low laugh as Schlatt slinks towards him, like a comforting predator._

_Their lips connect and fireworks go off in Quackity’s brain. He feels it, the reflection of each other’s souls, the leaning of one mirror against another, and he pulls harder on the man’s shoulders._

_Schlatt is still kissing him just as fervently, but suddenly, as the taller man navigates his way down to his neck, an awful pain erupts in his chest._

_Letting out a gasp, Quackity chokes out Schlatt’s name, hands enclosing desperately around his wrists._

_“Schlatt-”_

_But it’s too late; the man looms over his body, a pulsing, red heart gripped firmly between his fingers. Blood oozes down the man’s wrists and stains the sheets below them._

_There’s laughing, someones laughing, but it can’t be Quackity, it can't. It can't be Quackity because he's panicking so much he can't see straight and he can feel every single drop of blood fleeing his body as if Schlatt had generated some sort of magnetic connection and he’s dying, he's going to die and bleed out. Schlatt leans impossibly closer, mouth stretched open in a predatory shape, and bites into the flesh. He feels it, feels every puncturing of the man's teeth. He's going to kill him, he's going to kill him and, and, and-_

Quackity’s eyes fly open.

His body jolts upwards, muscles seizing and his hands spasming, opening and closing at an awkward rate. If his fingers were in rhythm with his heart he would surely be dying.

Quackity finds he wakes up like this a lot, body wracked with perilous tremors and his face coated in a slim layer of sweat.

There’s always this brief moment when he jolts awake where he can’t remember whether he’s in Schlatt’s bed, his own, a ravine in Pogtopia, or, as of late, a couch in Technoblade’s living room.

He isn’t sure which location he prefers.

Quackity runs his hands down his tired face just as Karl peeks in, presumably coming from the kitchen. He can see Sapnap hovering behind him, unsure whether or not he should fully come in. Willing his panic down, the trembling man does his best to appear unafraid.

Schlatt would have wanted it. Technoblade would have mimicked it.

“Should I uh, get you some water maybe?”

The voice is genuine and lovely, lovely like maple syrup and just as all encompassing, just as enthralling. 

Quackity tries not to notice that Karl has stopped asking whether he’s okay or not. Even he knows people who are okay don’t wake up rigid with fear and shaking from made up memories of their dead husband.

“Yea,” he clears his throat, “water would be great.”

Karl nods his head at Sapnap, who disappears behind the shadows in the hallways to go grab the water. 

Quackity sits up, or at least as much as his body will let him, and relaxes against the headboard. There’s no feeling in his brain, just a bland and tasteless fuzziness. Running his tongue over his teeth, he vaguely acknowledges he should probably brush them.

A sort of pain crosses Karl’s face and he’s moving to sit next him in the bed.

For a second Quackity just stares, at his hands, and his sheets, or at anything that isn’t Karl. Then, feeling uncomfortably timid, he slowly raises his hand towards Karl, ghosting over any part of him.

Karl doesn’t comment, just wraps a warm and sturdy hand around Quackity’s trembling and cold one. It’s nice and it’s light, but for the life of him Quackity can’t figure out why it feels that way. Then after a moment Karl tugs on it, gently guiding Quackity to rest against his shoulder.

His whole body seizes and Karl immediately drops his hand.

“Sorry,” is all Quackity can croak out.

“No no, no God, Quackity, you don’t need to be sorry. Never, not ever ever _ever.”_

To punctuate his point, he’s shaking his head, honey hair dancing over his forehead. It’s weird, it looks weird, and most of all it _feels_ weird, like someone has cast a honey coated filter over his vision, chasing away the dark crimson that had overtaken his senses for so long. He almost wants to ask if he’s awake, ask Karl to pinch him, or maybe kill him, because Quackity dies in all his dreams. It would be fulfilling.

He folds his arms over each other and the question suddenly dies on his tongue.

With ash still dissipating in his mouth, Sapnap enters the room, baring a glass cup of cool, fresh water, and moves to stand next to Karl. He leans over to pass the cup to Quackity, arms brushing over both his and Karl’s body.

The cup is placed between his fingers but for some reason he doesn’t remember what to do with it.

Quackity stares at the cup like he doesn’t know how to drink from it.

Noticing his dilemma, Karl curls his hands around Quackity’s, encasing the glass between both of theirs, and slowly raises it up to Quackity’s lips.

He drinks it.

It feels nice, feels relieving, so like any parched puppy dog, he keeps drinking it, drinking until his body doesn’t even seem to register that he’s still drinking it.

When there’s no water left, Sapnap takes the glass out of his hands and moves to set it on the desk next to his bedside, and even in the cup’s abesense, Karl doesn't move his hands. Quackity ducks his head down, softly resting it against Karl’s shoulder. A hand, too big to be Karl's, rests on his knee from above the sheets.

He feels warm.

He also feels entirely detached.

_It is going to feel better._

But sometimes you have to break the bones before you can heal them.

From behind him his wings jitter, protesting their awful condition. Next to him Karl shifts slightly, moving to allocate more space for them, without breaking any physical contact. It’s so soft, so gentle, that Quackity can’t ever imagine asking Karl to break his wings for him.

It's in moments like these that Quackity doesn’t think he’ll ever stop being grateful for Karl. Karl lays next to him when Quackity is pretty sure he’s dying, or already dead, and laughs at him with a soft innocence that makes Quackity’s insides feel squishy.

It’s also moments like these that make Quackity feel guilty. Guilty about the second heart that beats in his chest and in his blood and guilty over the fact that he still misses the man he hates the most.

But Karl doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know and he should never know.

Does Schlatt know? The _can he feel it_ hangs forever unanswered in the front of his brain, and Quackity vaguely wonders if this is it, if he’s meant to spend the rest of his life repenting his sins until at confession he dies to join and weep among the unholiest of faithful Gods. 

Quackity knows that the second Karl finds out Quackity has eaten Schlatt’s heart that the world will end. The world will come crashing down and Quackity will be exposed as the evil, demented, and wretched soulless devout he always was. He’ll grow devil horns, _ram horns,_ and he’ll stitch his wounds closed with the hair of his dead lover and tie them off with the strings of his rosary.

Perhaps it’s why Technoblade feels different now. He thinks about all the times he was petrified and how now the feeling has been replaced with a soft, grotesque allusion to mutual understanding. 

Quackity wants to kill him, no doubt about it, but Quackity also cannot deny that Technoblade _understands._

He understands a part of Quackity that Karl never will, always taking in whatever version of Quackity the man has the effort to put forward and treating it no different than the last.

“Q, I think you're going to be late for work,” Karl’s voice is gentle in his ears, “but if you can’t go in today, I’m sure-”

Quackity huffs, and in one swift motion heaves all of his bedsheets off, swinging his legs over so he’s completely parallel with Karl. For a moment the world swivels and Quackity takes that moment to remember how to speak like he’s still a person.

“It’s okay, I can, I can go in today. Not like this is...” Sapnap and Karl exchange a look, _not like this is new._

“We know you can handle it, just,” Sapnap brushes his hand over his shoulder, “just take it easy man.”

When he arrives late, Tubbo and Fundy both greet him with distant gazes. Tubbo doesn’t even appear to have really seen him, and it’s sort of funny, Quackity supposes, that he fits right in. He leans over his desk, letting his head rest on the cool wood and breathes. 

It tastes musty and Quackity allows his mind to wander, absentmindedly acknowledging that some of the dust he’s breathing in now could be the same dust that glowed in the light before the explosion that tore open L’manberg.

Like ashes, it tastes like ashes. He screws his mouth shut. Like _Schlatt’s ashes,_ like his own. 

The air seems to be ringing, but whenever Quackity darts his eyes around the room, the feeling of being watched leaves just as quickly as it came. 

There’s a moment where it feels like Schlatt, lavish and ghastly and awkwardly potent, but that feeling vanishes and a new concoction hangs in the air. 

It feels less sinister, it feels more _earthly._

 _Strange,_ Quackity notes, wondering with an edge of panic, if he had already fallen asleep again. 

Testing his lucidity, Quackity shifts his position slightly, rolling his forehead over the cool desk, and a subtly painful pressure begins to build in his skull. The headache feels foregin in a way pain never felt, and it’s almost comforting, the same way the phantom aching of his wings is. 

Quackity vaguely notes he never thanked Technoblade for bringing him into shelter the other night. Focusing all of his energy towards the topic, he tries to divert his exhaustion into endless pondering. He thinks about how funny it is, about how he’ll get up the same way every single morning, take off his wings and fold them neatly into his sternum. He’ll close the hinges in his chest that Schlatt had left slightly ajar and come next rainfall, he’ll pull out a new, wretched wing like it’s some sort of broken umbrella.

He’ll always be like this, he muses, he’s always going to be the middle layer of the painting, the broken shell of a dead beetle, and with most resentment, he wonders why, _why,_ he’s always going to be the underdog. 

_(“You’re too kind Quackity,” the voice is soft, “you're far too kind for this sort of Earthbound hellfire.”)_

His fatigue induced delirium softens the edges of the harsh double edged sword he wields, Schlatt wields, but it still hurts, still bleeds, all over his hands and his new desk in new L’manberg.

But Quackity is too tired of defending his broken wings.

Feeling strangely exhausted, Quackity lets his eyes droop.

Curling his fingers into his palm, _dont sleep dont sleep dont sleep-_

When Quackity wakes up at night in moments of pure terror, he wonders how Technoblade does it, the killings, or if this is just another one of those things he’s too dumb to understand.

Anytime he sees Technoblade he instinctively dons his hysteria like it’s a crown, and tries to ignore the part of him that wants Technoblade to reach out for him again.

(It didn’t come until Quackity and Technoblade visited Tommy in exile. Technoblade had seemed so domestic, so human, that it was hard for the smaller man to draw a parallel between this and the man who murdered like the world was his own fucking stage.

But it’s always easier to murder if they aren’t human, the same way it’s easier to take a victim if you are no longer human.

Quackity ignores the feeling of Schlatt taking off his skin that ghosts along his arms.

Ram horns push into his chest and Quackity is reminded that somehow the best murderers, best killers, are always the most human)

It burns. It burns and burns and it keeps burning until Quackity is sure each of the neatly made incisions have cartarized.

Fighting down the growing nausea in his stomach, Quackity leans his head back off of the desk, eyes following in a blurry sort of delay.

His wings shiver and a feeling of dread creeps into his throat when the realization that he’s going to have to preen them at some point sinks in. They’re just like everything else about him. They’re ugly, deformed, useless, tainted, but still, even as unkempt and messy as they are, a direct portal to his time back with his husband.

It’s a good type of cartarizing. At least Quackity tells himself it is.

He spends the rest of the day letting his enlightenment eat him up, gnawing at his insides until he can feel his flesh melting away.

It feels dumb, when he stumbles over the to the railing that separates the L’manberg citizens from falling into the water, and tries his best to push down the panic that’s growing in his chest, that this is the apex of his existance.

_(“Quackity, your wings are, are,” Schlatt, for once in his life, looks truly as if his breath has been taken away, “they are gorgeous.”_

_A nervous and bashful smile shapes his mouth as light giggles tumble into the air, “Schlatt, I can barely even fly anymore…”_

_“Baby,” a hand rests on his shoulder as warm breath fogs his neck and his senses, “they're not just beautiful, they’re ethereal.”_

_“Really? Y-you mean it?”_

_Potent anxiety weaves its way into his voice._

_“Yes, they are, they are so,” Schlatt inches closer to them, “can I touch them?”_

_Shifting from foot to foot, Quackity weighs his options. Nobody touches his wings. But Schlatt isn’t nobody, he’s his lover, his husband, his wonderful and caring number one in the whole world._

_“I,” he risks a glance at Schlatt’s eyes, “yes. Yes you can, just please be gentle.”_

_“Of course I’ll be gentle,” fingers glide over the top of his wings, and they involuntarily angle upwards towards the touch, “something this pretty isn’t meant for this world.”_

_Quackity laughs, unable to to quell the pleasing warmth that is fanning outwards from his wings._

_“Schlatt, they're just wings.”)_

Quackity has to remind himself his wings are his own thing, separate entirely from Schlatt. The wood from the post below his fingertips weaves its way under his nails. He can barely feel it.

_(The grip suddenly tightens._

_“No, no, Quackity. These are more than just wings,” his hands are starting to push._

_“Wait wait- Schlatt? What're you doing? Please- Ow! Hey-”_

_“Shhh shhhs hh- if you keep protesting it will only feel worse just- stop moving-”_

_His wings flutter desperately against the hands that are attempting to pin them to his back, and the growing pain and panic is forming an imposing lump in his stomach._

_Once Schlatt, always bigger and always stronger, has them pinned effectively to his back, he grips the smaller’s shaking form even tighter. Quackity’s whole body is flush against Schlatt’s, the taller’s body feeling slightly akin to a straight jacket._

_“No one," his voice sounds strained, "no one, you hear me, Quackity? No one gets to feel these but me, okay?”_

_“Sh-schlatt, what are you-”_

_“No. One. You hear me? No. One. Else.”)_

Quackity throws up.

He vomits up his lunch and his fresh cool water that Sapnap brought him and lets his knees hit the wood below him. His wings hang limply at his sides, draping over his body like some sort of restraint.

He hates it, hates them, because what’s the point of a _goddamn bird if it can’t even fucking fly?_

As he rises to his feet, in the corner of his eye he swears he catches a glimpse of a blood red cloak. However, the second he turns to face it, ready to start yelling or maybe start crying, the figure is gone. He wonders if the crimson was just another element of the vivid hallucination or if truly was something real.

Quackity can hardly tell the difference.

Huffing, Quackity turns on dizzy feet and makes his way out of the town center over the crater.

He glides through the door frame, body heavy and feeling as though it’s being weighed down by fish hooks that have buried themselves in his collarbones. He doesn’t change his clothes, just tugs his shoes off and leaves them somewhere in the hallway, uncaring as to whoever will find them. Entering his room, he lies down in his bed and almost the second he makes contact with the pillow, he's out. 

In his dreams he feels the feathers on his wings like one would feel razors against their skin. Schlatt smiles at him, Technoblade smiles at him, and the two of them frame him, closing him in and reaching for his wings. The three of them chant, Quackity feeling unsurprised at his own participation, and ever so slowly, six hands are on his wings.

The Schlatt in front of him is whole, the Schlatt in front of him has a body, a body with working hands and a beating heart. The Schlatt in his dreams makes Quackity yearn, makes Quackity love and miss and wish so badly that those hands would close around him and hold.

Something cuts into the base of his wings and they fall, bleed, and sing all at once. Quackity is singing, screaming, and he can't tell whether it is in joy, pain, or a sickening mixture of both.

When they fall, he doesn’t cradle them, he doesn't touch them, and he doesn't miss them. 

Technoblade kills him and Schlatt kisses him on the temple, golden wings pinned to either sides of crucifix on the wall behind them.

It’s not a dream, but it's not quite a nightmare either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder what Schlatt's gonna do when he's back, if he does anything, and whether or not to write that into the story...


	8. nacham

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quackity deals with his wings, realizes feeling better can be a thing, and fears that the peace in L'manberg has gone on too long to be true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really like the first half of this chapter, but it sets up the next section. We're coming to a close here! 'Nacham' is a biblical Hebrew word for self-pity or in some situations, to comfort or repent. It's in the Hebrew Old Testament.

_(I’d hate to amputate this artificial limb, but staring at you my glass eyes are growing dim)_

Quackity wonders how much longer he can go on like this, without preening his wings, without speaking to Technoblade, and without missing his stupid, dead husband.

He tries twirling his pen around his finger, but when the pen simply flies out of his hand, he finally gives into his frustration.

_It’s all shit. It’s all just fucking shit._

From behind his back, his wings ache. He spends the whole day tilting his neck back, shifting side to side, and snapping at nothing. 

When he gets home, he knows Karl can sense his discomfort, present in his inability to stop trembling, and waits for the man to tell him to stop. 

He falls asleep, wakes up with ruffled and slightly painful wings shaking behind him, and tugs on his clothes as if they were the most offensive items he’d ever seen.

Quackity hates the way people seem to glance at him more, especially Technoblade and stupid _stupid_ Phil who’s wings have probably been preened to the heavens and back. 

He audibly grunts and a pair of eyes land on him.

A tilt of head, an allocation of time, and then Karl is facing him.

Although Karl doesn't close his hands around him, doesn't try to squeeze him until he’s still and until he’s unable to move or scream or until his wings are tucked neatly away until until-

_Like how Quackity had held Schlatt’s heart…_

-he’s being restrained in place, he still reaches forward.

“Q, are you all right?”

Quackity huffs, shaking his wings behind him, “yea, just a little uncomfortable.”

“Is it, uh,” Karl gestures to Quackity’s wings and clears his throat, “like, wing stuff?”

“Bird shit,” Sapnap supplies from the other room.

Karl giggles.

“Yea, bird shit.”

He walks around the whole day feeling like his wings are tingling behind him, but the feathers are far too gone that Quackity knows all too well it would hurt too bad to fix them.

Everybody seems to be looking at him, but it’s not until Philza sends him a slightly concerned and all knowing glance that Quackity finally caves.

“Yo! Fucking stop staring old man,” Phil sighs and tilts his head in his direction.

“Quackity…”

Phil just sighs, throwing an unimpressed stare in Quackity’s direction. He sets down the basket of fresh baked goods that he picked up from Niki’s bakery and takes a step towards the smaller.

Quackity mimics him, stepping backwards and crossing his arms.

Huffing in what could be either annoyance or defeat, Phil just tosses his hands in the air and moves back his basket.

He throws a glance back over his shoulder.

“You know I can help you, right mate?”

“Yea,” Quackity scrunches up his face, trying to appear as mean as possible, “but that would imply I need your help, and seeing as nothing is fucking wrong, I don’t need your goddamn pity points.”

“Hey!”

Quackity barely has time to turn his head before a figure strides into view, moving to stand protectively in front of Phil, a glimmering sword outstretched in Quackity’s direction.

“Don’t you dare talk to Phil that way.”

The blood red cloak settles around the man’s sturdy frame, and as sinister as the image is, the warm laughter that rumbles behind him is slightly offsetting.

Quackity feels himself flinch.

“Techno,” a hand folds neatly over the shoulder and nudges it slightly to the side, moving to stand adjacent to the man, “there’s no need to scare Quackity over here.”

After a moment, Technoblade relents, grumbling something under his breath, and Quackity can feel a numbing relief creep upwards from his toes. He slowly unfolds his arms.

“So, what're you doing in L’manberg? I don’t know if you've noticed, but,” he trains his eyes on Technoblade, “you're not quite the most welcome here.”

There's a growling noise.

Phil eyes Technoblade in the corner of his eyes, his pupils sharp as daggers, before pursing his lips and moving in front of the taller one in one short step.

“We will be leaving now, we were only grabbing some vegetables we can’t trade for in the cold.”

“Well- Well you’re not supposed to be here-”

“Quackity,” Phil moves closer, giving Quackity no time to step back, and slowly but surely, a warm hand is placed on his shoulder, “do you really not want us here or are just saying that because it’s easier to let us be evil?”

_Oh._

Technoblade’s eyes are burning holes into the top layer of his skin, and there is a subtle layer of panic brewing in his stomach. It feels uncomfortable and slightly acidic, but Phil’s just staring at him as if he’s just shared some menial fact and not started to dissect all of Quackity’s carefully constructed defenses.

He shoves the hand off.

“Fuck off,” Technoblade raises and eyebrow at the same time Phil does, “fuck off before I decide I’d rather slit your throat.

Phill looks amused.

“Sure thing.”

He turns heel and leaves, Technoblade’s gaze lingering a moment longer on him.

For a moment neither of them move, they just stare. There’s an element of something in Technobade’s eyes that Quackity can't decipher, and it makes an ungly fear burn in his chest. 

It almost looks like sympathy. 

The eyes glance to his wings.

Then, in the tip of a lavender filled glass bottle, the two men are gone.

The feeling of the eyes, however, don't leave.

He can't tell whose eyes they are that he feels. Sometimes when he looks in the mirror, he feels eyes behind him, eyes that don't show up in the glass reflection. As he walks through the city, in scattered puddles and pools of water, he sees the number of eyes multiply, leaping out at him with outstretched pupils that wish to strangle him.

He falls; falls into the depth of the optic nerve, having broken through the cornea long ago.

Quackity falls asleep feeling hot and cold and itchy. His wings burn and his eyes burn and his annoyance festers like an infected wound, feeling uncomfortable and heavy.

There's an awkward pressure growing in his brain that he doesn't know how to deal with. 

It’s getting increasingly harder for Quackity to look at himself. He doesn't know how Technoblade and Phil, Phil with his beautiful wings, had managed to look at him without gagging or turning in disgust.

Was Technoblade’s stare one of disgust?

Quackity knows he’s exaggerating, knows he’s making it up, because there's no way that gentle and earnest Karl would lie to him as he places his hands on his face. But Karl _glows,_ Karl glows in the light and Sapnap glows just as bright alongside him and Quackity can't help but feel there’s no way he can compete with his ruffled and unkept wings.

In a moment of horror he stands next to Karl, who's fixing his hair in the mirror, when a thick, black substance spills over his eyelids. He yells, well he assumes he does, because when he swings towards the mirror, he can see Karl’s mouth moving but hear no sounds coming out. 

The mirror had shattered, burying little pieces of itself in his knuckles.

He’s drowning, trapped somehow underwater, under boiling, scalding hot water, and it’s cooking his flesh, marring him, making him even uglier than before.

Quackity feels a wetness cascading down his face, so he raises his fingers up to frame his cheeks.

Oh God.

_Oh God._

His irises are bleeding, _they must be,_ spilling an ugly black and red blood all over his skin and Karl, blessed and beautiful Karl is going to be stained, going to be marked, and there's a panic wrapping its hands around his neck.

“Q,” Karl had said, “Q look at me.”

But he couldn’t, he couldn't look and the awful terror had bled into the rest of the morning until his body gave in and slept into early hours of the next morning.

“We’ll just have to take down the mirrors,” he hears in the morning, a concerned voice whispering to a worried recipient.

“Yea, we can just tape over the ones in the hallway.”

It’s shameful and it makes Quackity feel stupid, but when he turns to the phantom outline of glass in the hallways, the face of black tape is welcoming.

_If I can’t see them, they're not there._

For a solid week Quackity dreams of nothing but black, solid mirrors. 

He entertains the idea that he preens them, that _Schlatt preens them,_ like he did when they were still in love, and it makes his body feel less heavy when he dreams.

Between his moments of sleep and work and sleep and dream and sleep and think, he hears Sapnap and Karl discussing in private.

They were never like this before, but he hears them now, in a way that evokes a sense of paranoia in his system.

Are they listening? Are they watching?

Quackity tugs himself away from the prying eyes that suddenly must belong to Karl and Sapnap and lets himself sink into his own self pity.

He’s too tired to feel stupid.

The sound of his own pity feels comforting, a nice opposition to the strident nature of the eyes that constantly hum around him.

He hears Technoblade’s name float through the air hand in hand with Phil’s, and he doesn’t understand why he’s dreading finding out the why.

Talking with Technoblade face to face sounds like a terrible experience.

Actually, communication in general sounds like a terrible experience.

He’s going to have to do it at some point. He knows he can’t avoid Technoblade forever, but for some reason the man just feels different now.

It’s off putting, the way Quackity’s rash anger and confrontational blunt theatrics don’t work on the taller. Quackity hates the way all his words and emotions glide right through Technoblade’s ears and a part of it makes him want to see just how loud he has to scream for them to bleed, while another part wonders if he cries into the man's arms would he at least hold him softly as he killed him.

Quackity hates it, hates that when he becomes close to someone, he inevitably reaches the point where wants to fall apart all over them, _because people look so pretty when they’re covered in blood, don’t they?_

When Quackity is woken up early on a misty, dewy morning, he feels Karl’s hand on his shoulder like one would feel an anchor.

He closes his eyes to still the reeling in his head.

“Hey Q,” Karl’s voice is soft, and it sounds like he’s talking to a wounded animal instead of a human being, “we’ve got someone here to see you.”

Confusion floods his senses like a bucket of cold water, and suddenly he feels alert. He opens his eyes.

“A visitor?”

Karl shifts and throws a glance at Sapnap who's hovering in the doorway, looking unsure of himself.

“Yea,” a huff, “can we uh, can we send them in?”

“Who is it?”

Sapnap looks uneasy, shifting uncomfortable and Karl lets out an open mouthed breath.

“I think it’s best if you just see, okay?”

Quakcity raises his eyes up to meet Karl’s face, and Karl quickly looks away in the direction of Sapnap.

 _It’s okay,_ Quackity rationalizes, he trusts Karl and he trusts Sapnap.

He runs his fingers over his knuckles, shifting slightly upwards and causing his bed sheets to pool around his waist.

“Okay.”

Karl throws him a smile, leaning away from the bed.

“Awesome! They're waiting in the living room, so get dressed and come on out once you're ready okay?”

He nods, shifting to move out of bed.

Quackity dresses mechanically, feeling like a robot and less human than ever, brain feeling sharp and awake despite the fuzziness in his mouth.

When he drifts into the hallway, he hears muffled speaking in the living room.

“...I can take him back to my place where I’ve got the proper materials, but if you think he’d fare better here than...”

“Oh nono,” it’s Sapnap’s voice, “I think you should do what you think is best.”

“Well, it’s not necessarily about what’s best for his wings, and you two know him the best-”

An uncomfortable anger bubbles in his chest in response to the way they are talking about him, talking about him like he’s a child, unable to care for himself.

“I think I can make that decision myself, thank you.”

Three heads turn towards him.

“And you,” he raises a shaking finger in the direction of the newcomer’s voice, “are the last person I need telling me what to fucking do.”

The newcomer, Phil, raises his hands in front of him in some sort of surrender, but a small smile still plays at the corner of his lips. It’s slightly infuriating, that he seems to find the situation amusing, but Quackity can feel his shoulders already slumping forward and his finger already lowering.

“Fine,” he crosses his arms and lowers his eyes, “what do you want from me?”

“Quackity, I wouldn’t say I want anything from you-”

“Then why are you here all up in my business?”

Karl tosses a glance in his direction.

An eyebrow raises.

“Quackity, let me finish. I was saying I am not here to get something from you. I am here to offer you help.”

Quackity tilts his head to the side.

Phil’s wings expand and momentarily fluff, a shimmering light running over them in a wave.

Oh.

He looks at his shoes again.

“This is about my wings, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Phil takes a step forward and Quackity raises his chin, “I have better supplies back at my place if you're willing to make the journey back there with me."

“I…”

He trails off, feeling Karl shift beside him. Quackity lets his body relax against the wall behind him, his wings awkwardly jerking in order to compensate for their uncomfortable position.

Someone sighs, and Sapnap moves to rest his hand on Karl’s shoulder.

“We think it would be good,” Quackity raises his eyes, “you know, Karl and I don’t know anything about uh, bird stuff, and well, it doesn't quite take a genius to notice that your…” Karl and Phil both turn to look at Sapnap, “your….”

“Your wings aren’t lookin’ the hottest, mate.”

Quackity feels a dreadful shame unfurling in his gut.

“Yea,” Sapnap supplies, “what he said.”

Six eyes are trained on him. It feels predatory and it feels gross. Ram horns tickle the back of his neck.

“Okay.”

Phil raises his eyebrows once again.

“Okay?”

“Yes,” he bites out, “okay. And don't make me say it again, fucker.”

A chuckle, a turn towards the door, then lastly, an “are you ready?”

Quackity brushes past Karl, who reaches a hand out to grab his, and stands next to Phil, wishing for the entire process to just end.

The journey is awkwardly quiet. There’s a tensity in the air that Phil doesn't seem to notice, or at least purposefully chooses to ignore, but it eats up at Quackity. It feels as if the air has unzipped and the inside of the zipper’s edge is running it’s serrated metal fingers all over his skin and all over his wings.

“We’re almost there,” Phil supplies.

But Quackity didn't need his reassurance to notice they are almost to the shared house of Technoblade and Phil. He recognizes the chill in the air and the crunch of snow below his feet.

_“I knew you’d come back for me.”_

Embarrassment glows under his skin, and for the first time since they left the house, Quackity opens his mouth.

“Is Technoblade home?”

“He could be,” Phil throws a curious glance in his direction, “but he said he was tending to his turtles this morning.”

“Turtles?”

“Yea, Technoblade has been caring for some turtle eggs he found,” Phil raises a hand to sun, momentarily shielding it before slightly changing his trajectory, “the bigger eggs hatched and now Techno’s got some little turtle babies to care for.”

“Oh.”

An amused huff escapes Phil’s mouth, “just oh?”

“Yes, just oh I guess.”

The snow feels like it’s burning his skin.

“Not quite the fella you’d think to have baby turtles runnin’ around him?”

“No,” Quackity can picture it, a slightly humorous image in his mind, of tall and regal Technoblade tending to helpless and weak baby turtles, “not at all.”

“Well there’s a lot you probably don't know about Technoblade.”

“What’s that supposed to me- ya know what? Nevermind.”

Phil doesn't try to make conversation again, and in a way Quackity almost misses the pleasant rumble of his voice, while another part of him rejoices for the silence. 

When the house comes into view, Quackity can see the soft grey smoke of the chimney painting wonderful waves against the crystalline sky, and it feels almost homely in a nostalgic sorta of way he doesn’t understand.

“Just knock your shoes off on the mat when we get in.”

Quackity nods, following behind Phil as the door swings open. He taps his toes and the heels of his shoes against the dark mat, watching as snow falls off the grooves of his tennis shoes onto the floor, melting into a soft sludge.

“Alright, let me go grab some things and you,” Phil points at him then at a couch in the living room in front of them, “can sit there and I'll be right back.”

Nodding, Quackity crosses the room and sits. He sits as still as he can, unsure of where to put his hands or his feet and whether or not his breathing is something he should do quietly or out loud.

There’s no eyes on him. 

“Alrighty mate,” Phil appears at the bottom of the stairs, holding some sort of bottle, before settling down next to Quackity on the couch.

“I'm going to preen your wings,” the air must have just been vacuumed out of the room because Quakciy doesn’t think he can breathe, “but first, I want you to tell me what you know about preening your own wings.”

_Oh._

Quackity knows this is where he’s supposed to respond, but the lump in his stomach has extended up through his throat and it's suffocating him, making it impossible for him to speak let alone breathe.

Phil is going to touch his wings.

Phil will touch his wings and when Quackity goes home, Schlatt will lay next to him, in their bed, their _coffin,_ and he’ll know. He'll smell Phil’s hands, feel where Phil’s hands were, and he’ll yell. Quackity will lose his wings and he’ll lose his lover, for he’d have broken them, broken the commandments, and he, Quackity, will go down a sinner, ever more wretched than the man next to him.

“Quackity?”

The voice is gentle.

“I- sorry, I just need, fuck-”

“Mate mate mate, breathe, you can take as long as you need. You don't even need to tell me if you can't, okay?”

Quackity nods. It's all he can muster.

“Can you turn for me? I’m going to start at the top of your wings. Tell me if it hurts, got it?”

The lump in his throat feels strangely like a heart and burns vaguely like the edge of a mirror covered in black tape.

Quackity nods.

 _This is okay._ An exhale. _This is going to be okay._

The second Phil’s fingers meet the first feather Quackity realizes, very abruptly, that this is very much so, not okay.

He jerks his whole body away, turning around so quickly that Phil lets out a gasp of surprise that makes Quackity’s panic only climb higher.

“Just-” his voice sounds absent and scared, “just, it's just tha- that well Schlatt, Schlatt said, and and Schlatt wanted-”

“Hey hey, it’s okay mate. I know I’m not Schlatt, but you can relax for me, okay? I’m not going to hurt you.”

The acidic adrenaline is making his fingers and legs shake. He places his palms flat on his legs, weekly attempting to stop them. It doesn’t work.

“If it helps, you can pretend I'm Karl?”

 _Karl?_ Not Karl, not _innocent and wonderful Karl._

Quality looks up at Phil.

“I- I dont think, oh I don't know, I don't know I'm just sick of this, and sick of the way this is like, like a thing now, I want it to not be a thing- and- and I want for Schlatt t-”

A hand is placed in front of his face.

“You don't need to explain anything, it was just a suggestion, but you know yourself the best.”

Weakly nodding, Quacity turns his back to Phil, “yea, go ahead.”

He closes his eyes.

It feels like something he’s never felt before.

Quackity knows in his head that it probably only feels so good because they haven't been preened in _lord knows how long,_ but the warm and fuzzy feeling that is slowly overtaking his body lulls his brain to a stagnant state.

His soft trills slowly start to lose the shape of words, melting all over Phil’s hands, his body slumping closer to the couch. 

“It’s okay, ya know, to miss him.”

Quackity’s brain tugs at his heart

“Of course it is,” he slurs out, “he was my fucking husband.”

“But you do know that right, no one is going to blame you for missing him.”

Quackity doesn’t know what to say. Phil’s hands pause and he’s given the break he needs to collect himself.

“Whatever, I don’t need your-“

“Quackity,” Phil sounds slightly exasperated, “can you please stop doing that thing where you assume we all are pitying you? You went through trauma, _trauma,_ of course your head is gonna be a little fucked! It’s people like us you need. So please, let me get through this and then we can chat okay, mate?”

Something akin to tears are pooling in his eyes and they must be running down his throat because it's feels too hard to breathe again.

“Okay,” is all he manages to choke out.

Phil laughs, warm and pleasant, as his fingers resume their meticulous preening.

As feather after feather is pushed into place and cleaned, Quackity can feel his bones turning to rubber and his skin melting off of him. He's used to this feeling, the feeling of completely falling apart, except this time, it’s a pleasant disembodiment. 

Hands ghost all along side his back and his arms, sending gushes of warm fuzziness all throughout his nervous system. It feels as if a heated blanket has been thrown over his body, wrapping around him and completely encasing him in all its warmth. 

By the time Phil’s hand’s have stopped moving, Quackity’s brain and body are both too tired to register what’s happening, and his wings buzz in a happy harmony behind him.

His form, which had already dropped backwards onto Phil, is slowly being pushed forward until he’s resting partially on his stomach and partially on his side, his cheek pressed against the arm of the couch.

Something is tossed over his form and a strangely peaceful sleep creeps into his mind.

The sleep induced fog that clogs his brain whispers to him that the last time he slept this soundly, was also on this very couch. Quackity must have laughed out loud, for he hears another laugh, resembling more of a chuckle, call in response.

His whole body feels like it’s glowing, and behind his eyelids black taped mirrors shed their skin like snakes do, and his reflection dances happy and carefree in front of him.

Inside the mirrors, Karl dances, Schlatt dances, Sapnap dances, even Technoblade shuffles as Phil’s infectious and loud laughter accompanies the soft and pleasant vibrato that's flooding his senses. 

It’s peaceful and it’s serene.

The Quackity in the black taped mirror wakes up knowing he’s ugly and shameful, wakes up missing his dead husband and wakes up with knives punctured into his skin like Christmas ornaments.

But in this moment, he’s not that Quackity.

This Quackity laughs alongside his best friends and this Quackity forgives his enemies. This Quackity can fly and wears his old wedding ring around his neck on a silver chain like one would wear a cross. He lets the beads of his rosary pulse through his blood stream, and when he screams, he screams because he’s so happy and beautiful and free that nothing in his earthly form can contain it.

When Quackity wakes up, Technoblade escorts him home. 

They pass by a collection of baby turtles in a pen outside and Quackity doesn't miss the affectionate glace Technoblade throws in their direction.

The snow beneath his feet seems to jitter, and for some reason it makes Quackity feel excited, as if he’s been reborn. Not as an infant, helpless and unmarked, but as Quackity, the man in the mirror and the man whose standing where he is now in the sunlit snow.

He bids Technoblade a farewell at the steps of his house, and when he enters he pulls both Karl and Sapnap into a large hug, lingering probably longer than he needed to. When Karl catches him peeling the tape off of the mirrors in the hallway, he’s quick to drag Sapnap in, and suddenly it’s the three of them, all tugging clean, glowing mirrors free of their shackles.

He spends the rest of the day inside, singing to himself and staring into the mirrors, when he feels Karl's presence grow agitated.

Quackity asks what’s wrong, but neither him nor Sapnap supply anything, both simply alluding to the fact that Technoblade never went home and Phil was in L’manberg. 

They laugh, soft and tense.

But something feels wrong.

The unrest burns across his brain like black tape when he tries to sleep that night, and when the fear of unknowing rests its perpetual pulsing, he feels it in his mouth, tasting like copper and like alcohol.

_(“Schlatt,” Quackity manages to choke out between painful laughs that shake his whole body, “that much drinking is surely, surely a sin.”_

_Schlatt’s smirk is devious and he raises his glass upwards and outwards toward Quackity, letting his chest and head lean towards the smaller._

_“Oh but Quackity,” his eyes are piercing, “we’re not drinking wine. We are drinking the blood of our lord and savior.”)_

Ram horns cradle the nape of his neck when he wakes up and in the mirror across the room, he sees a carnivorous wolf dropping off the carcass of a dead rabbit at the feet of another wolf. L'manberg shivers under the planks of his home. 

Quackity runs the heel of his hands over his eyes.

 _It’s never been easy before,_ he thinks, _why would he think it could start now?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bruh. i work at a hospital, so im a little busy rn, not sure when the next chapter will be out!


	9. the proverbs of non-secular

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Zeus was, probably quite imaginably, heartbroken. By the time he found where his son had been taken, the Titans had consumed him, eaten every last piece of his body,” Quackity feels eyes roam over the side of his face, “except for one. Do you know what piece they kept, Quackity?”
> 
> OR: Quackity figures out what the tensions in L'manberg mean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not very happy with this chapter and I don't know anything about Greek mythology, so I'm sorry for any inaccuracies...

The world feels uncomfortable. 

The carefully curated safehouse that Quackity had constructed within Sapnap’s hugs and Karl’s laughter is diminishing quickly, so quickly he’s not even sure it was ever there in the first place.

Quackity knows he’s made progress, but in a weird way he feels as if he shouldn’t. He’s become so immune to the throbbing pain in his chest that it had evened into a barely noticeable, dull ache. 

Tension seems to be everywhere, and a part of Quackity wonders if the only reason he’s still so okay is because he’s already done this, done this one thousand fucking times with Schlatt, and he knows, _God does he know,_ he’d do it all over again if someone asked.

_“Baby,” Schlatt’s voice is rough and sultry in his dreams, “you looked so much better when you were sick”_

But Karl doesn't seem to agree. 

Karl tells him he looks handsome and healthy and that is enough, well it _should be enough,_ but it’s not, because Quackity himself is not enough.

And now, sometimes Karl seems to just vanish.

His role as a tangible pillar in Quackity’s life is quickly diminishing, and as much as it’s worrying, it’s also equally as intriguing

Quackity wants to gag when Karl comes home at random times looking dazed and exhausted, wants to reach out and touch him, but something about the Karl in those moments feels too unreal. Someone as bright as Karl should never be that tired.

One time, Karl disappears for only three full hours, having heaved some of their friends out into the woods, and returns with the ash and remnants of the adventure coating his skin. Visibly delirious, he murmurs into Quackity’s ear about the _Town that Never Was_ and it pangs a part of him he doesn’t understand.

He tells himself he doesn't like watching Karl feel sad. Tells himself he hates watching the people he loves suffer. He tells himself so he won’t forget that he loves Karl a different way than he loved Schlatt. He tells himself so he won’t trick himself into thinking this is an act, a show, or a sickeningly horrific bravado.

But most of all, Quackity tells himself because he hates that he sort of likes it.

A sick part of Quackity is obsessed with Karl’s pain and eats it up, letting it fester in a damaged and rotten portion of his brain and his heart.

Sometimes, on nights when he hates himself the most, Quackity thinks about Schlatt from before the election.

Perhaps it's a biproduct of the stressful atmosphere he lives in, but he remembers it clearly. The cold nature of the winter had dragged the two of them into a bubble of warmth together, where they melted like hot wax all over each other’s hands

Quackity finds himself having to remind people he knew Schlatt before the election, and whether it’s in a lovesick defense of his honor or to prove him and Schlatt actually were in love at some point in time, Quackity doesn’t know.

He thinks about poor Tubbo, who only saw the worst, and it sparks a viscous anger in his chest.

The nights back then before the election had been so cold they rendered Quackity unable to stop trembling, even under the protection of his bed covers. Noticing his inability to sleep, Schlatt, who was inevitably crashing at Quackity’s lowly apartment, would drag the smaller into his arms until he stopped shaking.

They’d wake up nervous and bashful, still oblivious and uninfluenced by the performative nature their relationship would become.

At the time, Schlatt had held his arm around Quackity’s waist and hip like a secure and comforting hug, a gesture which too soon would feel more like a shackle.

Maybe it’s why Karl feels so familiar.

Maybe he misses Schlatt.

_He doesn't._

The L'manberg docks have never felt more unsteady and maybe, just maybe, Karl is simply the version of Schlatt Quackity had constructed and subsequently fallen in love with in his mind.

Karl's hands and body, forever warm and unabashed, will always hold Quackity’s as tightly as he asks them to. 

_Karl is a real person,_ Quackity thinks, _a real person with real fingers._

It makes Karl’s absence feel uncomfortable, and during a stretch of time where Karl and Sapnap both seemed to exist in an entirely different timeline, Quackity had found himself, once again, with Technoblade.

Sapnap had been so far retreated into the folds of his own mind and Karl had, quite worryingly, been gone for two whole days already.

From his awkward perch on the edge of the hill, Quackity rises and lets the sunlight wash over his skin.

“I don’t know why I held onto them for so long.”

Technoblade pauses his movements and turns to him.

The sunlight sings, smooth and warm as syrup.

“Held on to what, sorry?”

“My wings.”

Technoblade tilts his head, eyes washing over Quackity’s wings as an apparent confusion takes over his face.

“Your wings..?”

“Yea, it’s like,” he gestures his hands, turning so he can’t see any of the other man’s face, “my wings are different now. They were so, so bad for so long and I just, I just let them be bad because it was easier and, and…”

He slows his gesturing, mouth still forming the words that his vocal chords fail to supply.

 _It was a piece of Schlatt, the last mark he gave me,_ Quackity mouths up towards the depleting, golden sunlight.

“Oh,” Technoblade shifts, the grass slightly crinkling. Quackity feels like thanking him, or telling him to thank Phil for him.

Wind rushes through the grass.

“I think it was supposed to be a sort of a lesson,” he turns to face Technoblade again, and the man’s eyes are aflame in the light, “like I was supposed to learn about this. It was all about not really fixing but like, but like,” his hands reach up towards the sun, “rebuilding.”

Technoblade hums, taking two steps forward to come and stand next to Quackity, before reaching his right hand up to shield his eyes from the sun.

“Quackity, would you like to hear a story?”

Slightly surprised Quackity turns to the man.

“Sure!”

He lowers one of his arms to knock Technoblade with his elbow, the other one falling to block the sun from his eyes, “lemme guess, in Ancient Roman Mythology-”

“I take back every single nice thing,” Quackity lets out a string of laughs, “and it’s not even Roman, it’s Greek, you really couldn’t remember one thing.”

“Shut up,” but Quackity doesn’t feel ridiculed, he just feels _present._

“There was a man once, although now regarded as someone of a myth, who went by Zagreus. Quackity, do you know who that is?”

“No,” he shakes his head, “Techno, no, for fucks sake I’m not a goddamn nerd-”

“Okay okay, although I prefer the term well educated, but anyway moving on. Zagreus was the son of Zeus and Persephone, although others reason that’s not quite the case. The myth surrounding the man is not necessarily the most well known, his life was, afterall, shrouded in mystery and darkness.”

Quackity shifts slightly closer to Technoblade, watching the sun paint soft shadows over his pale skin. 

“Zagreus, or the Orphic Dionysus, was taken from Zeus by Titans who opposed his power. The Titans believed the most accurate punishment for Zeus’ rule would be to,” Technoblade meets Quackity’s eyes, “dismember his body.”

The air suddenly feels cool. Shivers run up Quackity’s skin like an electric shock, sending static to close over his ears.

_(A beautiful puppy dog whimpers, and Quackity, ever so cruel, ever so violently emotive, grabs it by the scruff. In between his teeth a dead bird tastes like blood and ash and Quackity wonders how many more dead birds can he drop at Schlatt’s feet before the man finally snaps?_

_He sets the puppy down and fingers curl into the hair at the nape of his neck._

_“You are pretty,” there are fingers in his feathers, “you are powerless,” the skin framing the outline of his spine splits open, “and you are so unlovingly lovable.”_

_Vertebrae tumble out of the incision on his back and the puppy dog at his feet, weeps.)_

“Do you want to sit down? You look a little, uh, worse for wear there Quackity.”

Quackity nods, surprised to find not a hint of pity in his voice, and sinks to the ground.

Technoblade glances back out at the blood soaked skyline, seemingly unbothered by the man at his feet.

“Zeus was, probably quite imaginably, heartbroken. By the time he found where his son had been taken, the Titans had consumed him, eaten every last piece of his body,” Quackity feels eyes roam over the side of his face, “except for one. Do you know what piece they kept, Quackity?”

There’s a strange feeling of anxiety bubbling in his stomach, feeling acidic and invasive. Strangely, he doesn’t feel hunted, at least not in the way he had before in the man’s presence, but for some reason he feels like he’s being tested. 

Shifting almost defensively, Quackity looks down at his hands, which are absentmindedly peeling apart blades of grass.

“No. Or I don’t know, maybe the brain or something? I don’t know, Techno, what?”

Technoblade inhales, dropping into a crouch, his hands folding neatly over each other from where they dangle in front of him.

“His heart," the world stops, "they saved just his heart.”

Something different burns in his chest and again he tastes it, tastes the heavy and metallic taste that hugs his teeth like little uniforms.

“Oh,” he forces out.

It’s the taste of blood. The taste of the human heart.

Technoblade simply continues.

“Yep. _Oh._ But do you know what he did with the heart?”

Quackity shakes his head and Technoblade raises one of his hands to gesture over the edge of the cliff with no particular rhythm. When he speaks again, his voice sounds whimsical and far away.

“They ate it.” 

_Oh._

The back of Quackity’s throat feels like it’s rising, coming closer and closer until he’ll choke on it, or maybe throw it up. He wants Technoblade to stop talking, to leave him the fuck alone and let him grieve or laugh or cry, but a hopeful and traitorous part of him wants to hear the end of the story, wants hear whether or not the son was ever revived.

For better or for worse, Quackity gets his wish and Technoblade continues, expression completely unfazed.

“Well, more accurately, Zeus fed it, fed the heart to one of his lovers named Semele. She consumed the heart and there he was, reincarnated, just as whole as he was before.”

Quackity feels like he might be crying, but through the pounding in his ears that sounds vaguely like a heartbeat, he can’t be sure.

Paranoia hums in his ears, _he must fucking know, does he?_

Technoblade drops his hand.

“Why're you,” Quackity trails off and turns away from the sun’s lowering position, “why're you telling me this?”

Technoblade sighs.

“Because, Quackity, it’s not really supposed to be a lesson. Your wings weren't ever a lesson. They are a part of you.”

The air feels much crisper and much cooler with the absence of sunlight casting warm blankets over them.

“I still don't...”

Technoblade lets out a grunt, maneuvering himself until he’s sitting completely side by side with Quackity, close enough to touch if he wanted to. 

“You ate Schlatt’s heart, am I wrong?”

A heartbeat. A stutter. A heart beat again, pulling away until two heartbeats becomes one heartbeat again.

“Well, I, yes…”

“Then there you go.”

It must be a thing among killers, like an acute sense that allows them to see the blood on other murder's hands.

A smug smile works its way onto Technoblade’s face.

Spluttering in exasperation, Quackity gawks at him, “What do you mean there you go. You haven't told me shit!”

Technoblade laughs, leaning over to Quackity and nudging him with the top of his forehead.

“I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually, bird brain.”

“Hey,” Technoblade pulls back, “what- did you just- is that like a uh, a pig thing?”

A scowl erupts over Technoblade’s face.

“I didn’t do that.”

Quackity laughs, shifting sideways and pointing his finger at Technoblade’s face, “yes you did! You totally did, you just nudged me or something, the great Technoblade nudged me!”

Huffing out a dry chuckle Technoblade rises to his feet, cloak swishing behind him.

“Yea yea yea, talk all you want Birdy, but you still don’t know how to get to Karl’s house without me.”

Oh.

“So you’re playing dirty, eh Blade?”

Technoblade narrows his eyes until Quackity is pretty sure they're actually little daggers slicing through his own irises.

“Okay okay okay, point is taken and lips are sealed.

Technoblade huffs and starts walking away, already setting a brisk pace.

“Anyway, let's hurry back before your pathetic little friend starts to worry.”

Quackity doesn't have the heart to tell Technoblade that Karl hasn't been home in-

_“48 hours, it’s been 48 hours, Quackity. Don't you think we should say something? I mean he’s never gone this long. What if he’s hurt? I just… It doesn't sit right.”_

_Two perfectly insync sighs fill the negative space in the room._

_“I don't know Sap, what do I do?”_

_A grimace and then an, “I don't know either, looks like it might just be me and you for a bit.”_

-and he feels like he's smiling too much to even respond, fearful he’ll break the perfect moment.

“Lead the way Blade!”

Technoblade doesn’t laugh, his smile looking almost sad, and by the time they are only ten minutes into their journey home, Quackity can feel the same foreboding tension from earlier stinging his eyelids and making his muscles squirm.

Quackity used to say he hated his nightmares, used to say nothing was worse than his nightmares, but when Tommy, visible for the first time in seemingly months, attempts to put an axe through his best friend’s chest, Quackity knows just how wrong, how _fucking wrong_ he was.

Because it would have been so much easier if it was just a nightmare.

If it were a nightmare, Quackity would wake up shaking, wake up crying and throwing up and whimpering, only to remember that he is a person and this is reality. 

But this isn’t a nightmare.

Dream’s maniacal laughter fills the air and Sapnap’s body from its protective curl around him, trembles in pace with the exploding TnT. Quackity couldn't even run away, his tether to the nation too intrinsic and too powerful.

 _It’s all gone,_ but Quackity feels too tired to weep.

Sapnap is cradling his body against his chest as if he’s holding a corpse, and Quackity wonders just how much Sapnap feels like he is.

He desperately misses Karl and he misses the smiling version of Sapnap, but for some reason he can’t put his finger on, he wants to know what Sapnap looks like when he’s mourning, the same way he wants Sapnap to watch as he, Quackity, feels nothing, as he dies in the blood soaked crater of their dead country

It’s awful, Quackity is aware of this much, but it’s also terribly enchanting.

He drags himself up, hoisting himself onto the obsidian platform to stand next to the numb carcasses of the two perfect toy soldiers, and looks over the still burning monster. 

Dream and Technoblade walk across the pillars and around the mouth of L’manberg as if nothing has changed, and Quackity does his best to choke down the bile that tastes vaguely like betrayal in his throat.

“Don’t give up yet,”

Quackity turns toward Tommy, who looks strangely at peace in the rain, and watches Tubbo fumble blindly for his hand.

“Fellas,” the water runs over his skin, ridding it of the grime and blood, “should we sing it, the anthem, one last time? Just to sort of," his head feels locked in place, facing downwards, “pay our respects?”

Tommy nods and behind them, Ghostbur lets out a joyful hollar of approval and together they sing.

They sound terrible. There’s no way they don’t.

But with the wind in face, Quackity wouldn’t have it any other way.

_Because now it's all over..._

It feels as if the rain is washing off all the blood, all the ashes, and all the bruises that don't belong to him. It feels comforting and serene, and Quackity thinks if he were to close his eyes, he’d be able to forget that the soulful percussion resonating around them is not that of a lively drummer, but that a psychopathic killer and his bloody thirsty acquaintance’s murderous tendencies. 

There are no ram horns framing his cheek bones, no suit and tie closing in on his windpipe, and there are no broken, ugly wings.

In that moment, there are no black mirrors, and instead, Quackity knows if he were to look into a mirror, he would see the future.

There will be a Karl and there will be a Sapnap. They will exist, he knows it, he’s just got to get through _one more bad fucking nightmare_ and it will be over.

Quackity lets the rain engulf his entire body, and as he cranes his neck slightly upwards, he notices that the smell of ash and burning flesh is growing less prominent.

For once, Quackity just stands and lets the world cry. He lets himself cry and he lets Schlatt, wherever he may be, weep inside his chest.

Things will grow again. Even dead gardens are good fertilizer.

People are moving and singing around him but Quackity can barely hear them, for if one’s brain interprets nightmares with just as much vivid sensory awareness and emotional response as one would any waking moment, why would a nightmare be any less real than this?

 _It’s just a nightmare,_ he reasons, _one big fucking nightmare._

Karl will come home and together they will clean all of the mildew out of their hearts.

His chest will swing open on its creaking hinges and from within his sternum, sprouts will raise their hands out towards the open air.

In his fast asleep moments, Quackity will spoon feed his torment to Schlatt like cough syrup until the motherfucker chokes and dies. 

He will love Schlatt, awake and asleep, and he will become who he truly was, without any black taped mirrors and without any lacerations on his heart.

The song ends and Quackity finally thinks he understands it.

It has nothing to do with God.

_Catharsis._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really didn't want to go a month without an update, so after reading some comments I decide to edit this and here it is! I don't know how much longer this will be, but I have another chapter written, and will probably end this story loosely connected to whatever Quackity's new lore is.
> 
> EDIT: holy shit I was watching someone else then I saw tommy went live i was just yea ill watch tommy and holy fuck?? huh? im actually surprised he or tubbo hadn't already died but woah,,,


End file.
